Podcasts, Books, Blogs and People to Follow
Explore our Leaders' and communities favorite content: Top podcasts, books, and media recommended to me over the years. Join, share, and innovate!
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
Henry Ford
Here is a list of podcasts, books, media and some other people you might find interesting to follow. Feel free to comment if you have any to add. Some of these books are available as audio books also, which is the format a number of our speakers prefer when learning about business and self-improvement.
These also have been recommended to me by some of the speakers, the guests and my own friends and family. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
Podcasts & Audio
How I Built This with Guy Raz
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this
Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world’s best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.
This is a personal favourite of mine - check out the ones about the founders of Dyson, Slack, Shopify and WeWork if you don't know where to start.
Lenny’s Podcast
https://www.lennyspodcast.com/
Lenny Rachitsky (author of #1 business newsletter on Substack with 500k+ subscribers) interviews world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Masters of Scale
https://mastersofscale.com/
Masters of Scale is an original podcast hosted by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and investor at Greylock. In each episode, Reid shows how companies grow from zero to a gazillion, testing his theories with legendary leaders. Masters of Scale is the first American media program to commit to gender balance for guests.
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show is often the #1 business podcast on all of Apple Podcasts, and it’s been ranked #1 out of 500,000+ podcasts on many occasions. It is the first business/interview podcast to pass 100,000,000 downloads, and it has been selected as “Best of” Apple Podcasts for three years running, and readers of Fortune Magazine‘s Term Sheet recently selected The Tim Ferriss Show as their top business podcast. It has now surpassed 400M downloads.
Past guests include Neil Gaiman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, LeBron James, Ray Dalio, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edward Norton, Tony Robbins, Maria Sharapova, Jamie Foxx, Maria Popova, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Amanda Palmer, Malcolm Gladwell, Vince Vaughn, Rick Rubin, Reid Hoffman, Jon Favreau, Whitney Cummings, Mike Shinoda, and 300+ more.
Each episode, I deconstruct world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, sports, business, art, etc.) to extract the tactics, tools, and routines you can use. This includes favorite books, morning routines, exercise habits, time-management tricks, and much more.
Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/podcasts
HBR's Podcasts cover a wide range of topics that are relevant to various industries, management functions, and geographic locations. These focus on areas including leadership, organizational change, negotiation, strategy, operations, marketing, finance, and managing people.
Blinkist
Blinks Labs GmbH, commonly known as Blinkist, is a German book-summarizing subscription service based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 2012, and has about seven million users.
The service provides summaries of more 2,500 bestselling non-fiction books, 15-to-30-minute reads, otherwise known as blinks or book-in-blinks. Blinkist is available as a web-app and a mobile application and currently has the summaries in English and German languages only.
The basic service is free, and allows users to check out random daily picks. Paid plans allow the user to choose specific books
Without Fail
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/without-fail
Any big success requires looking failure in the eye. Without Fail is the new show from Gimlet Media that asks people who have pursued incredible things: What worked? What didn't? And why?
Each week, Gimlet cofounder Alex Blumberg will interview a person who’s taken a big bet and won or lost. He’ll talk to people who’ve risked everything to try something no one’s ever done before, or to try something they never thought they’d achieve. And he’ll interview people who looked like they had it all, only to fail spectacularly. Alex and his guests will share stories and lessons about what’s it’s like to succeed, what’s it’s like to fail, and how to live with the specter of both.
Guests for season one include Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors, Andrew Mason of Groupon, and Sophia Amoruso of Nasty Gal and Girlboss, among others.
The Innovation Show
http://www.theinnovationshow.io/
A weekly show interviewing leaders in their fields, authors, renowned professors, inventors, innovators, change-makers and mavericks to inspire, educate and inform the business world and the curious. This Global show speaks of something greater beyond innovation, disruption and technology. It speaks to the human need to learn: how to adapt and love a changing world. It embraces the spirit of constant change, of staying receptive, of always learning. The show exists to enable people to be fully informed to lead better lives, lives packed with meaning.
This Week in Tech
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech
This Week in Tech–casually referred to as TWiT – is the weekly flagship podcast and namesake of the TWiT.tv network. It is hosted by Leo Laporte and many other former TechTV employees and currently produced by Karsten Bondy. It features round-table discussions and debates surrounding current technology news and reviews, with a particular focus on consumer electronics and the Internet.
This is my favourite podcast. They stream live on a sunday, and frequently share their screens to share more information about what they are talking about. Personally this is best listened to on youtube premium - you can listen like a podcast and then quickly switch to video to see the stuff they are talking about.
Definitely worth a listen in my opinion!
Books
If You′re Not First, You′re Last: Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003OUX8UC?ref_=k4w_oembed_D6ZTjzDoPLeooF&tag=kpembed-20&linkCode=kpd
During economic contractions, it becomes much more difficult to sell your products, maintain your customer base, and gain market share. Mistakes become more costly, and failure becomes a real possibility for all those who are not able to make the transition.
But imagine being able to sell your products when others cannot, being able to take market share from both your competitors, and knowing the precise formulas that would allow you to expand your sales while others make excuses.
If You’re Not First, You’re Last is about how to sell your products and services—despite the economy—and provides the reader with ways to capitalize regardless of their product, service, or idea. Grant shares his proven strategies that will allow you to not just continue to sell, but create new products, increase margins, gain market share and much more. Key concepts in If You’re Not First, You’re Last include:
• Converting the Unsold to Sold
• The Power Schedule to Maximize Sales
• Your Freedom Financial Plan
• The Unreasonable Selling Attitude
Sell or Be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007FUDRB2?ref_=k4w_oembed_pSCjv1hN4RcWWE&tag=kpembed-20&linkCode=kpd
Whether it’s selling your company’s product in the boardroom or selling yourself on eating healthy, everything in life can—and should—be treated as a sale. And as sales expert Grant Cardone explains, knowing the principles of selling is a prerequisite for success of any kind.
In Sell or Be Sold, Cardone breaks down the techniques and approaches necessary to master the art of selling in any avenue. You will learn how to handle rejection, turn around negative situations, shorten sales cycles, and guarantee yourself greatness. Cardone will also teach you the success essentials of
• Selling in a bad economy
• Overcoming call reluctance
• Filling your pipeline with new business
• Staying positive, despite rejection
With the experience of a seasoned sales vet at the helm, Sell or Be Sold will change the way you perceive the sale—and life.
The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004X75OES?ref_=k4w_oembed_3MVWbgjQdwcfqw&tag=kpembed-20&linkCode=kpd
While most people operate with only three degrees of action-no action, retreat, or normal action-if you're after big goals, you don't want to settle for the ordinary. To reach the next level, you must understand the coveted 4th degree of action. This 4th degree, also know as the 10 X Rule, is that level of action that guarantees companies and individuals realize their goals and dreams.
The 10 X Rule unveils the principle of "Massive Action," allowing you to blast through business clichŽs and risk-aversion while taking concrete steps to reach your dreams. It also demonstrates why people get stuck in the first three actions and how to move into making the 10X Rule a discipline. Find out exactly where to start, what to do, and how to follow up each action you take with more action to achieve Massive Action results.
• Learn the "Estimation of Effort" calculation to ensure you exceed your targets
• Make the Fourth Degree a way of life and defy mediocrity
• Discover the time management myth
• Get the exact reasons why people fail and others succeed
• Know the exact formula to solve problems
Extreme success is by definition outside the realm of normal action. Instead of behaving like everybody else and settling for average results, take Massive Action with The 10 X Rule, remove luck and chance from your business equation, and lock in massive success.
The Go-Giver Leader
This is a compelling story of a struggling small business and an ambitious young executive charged with leading them to a crucial decision. The powerful message behind The Go-Giver Leader is that great leaders don’t try to act like leaders; instead, they strive to be more human. They focus on the concept “give, and you shall receive.”
The Go-Giver Leader promotes a mindset of being aware of those around you and expands on the idea that your influence is determined by how effectively you place others’ interests first. Leaders who do this will create prosperity for their communities and society, as well as for their companies and employees.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power … and our future.
Masters of Scale is an original podcast hosted by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and investor at Greylock. In each episode, Reid shows how companies grow from zero to a gazillion, testing his theories with legendary leaders. Masters of Scale is the first American media program to commit to gender balance for guests.
Zen Leader: 10 Ways to Go From Barely Managing to Leading Fearlessly
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zen-Leader-Managing-Leading-Fearlessly/dp/1601632118
Leaders today face nearly impossible tasks. Forced to do more with less, expand globally, innovate quickly, inspire broadly and - oh, yes - balance work and family. How can one manage all this pressure?
THE ZEN LEADER does not encourage you to just 'be peaceful.' Neither does it suggest you work harder, faster or ignore the pressure. Quite the opposite: it's about using the pressure to propel 'flips' in consciousness that create transformational leaders, leaders who create the future with joy and enthusiasm, rather than drive themselves and their people to exhaustion.
THE ZEN LEADER guides you through 10 'flips' that take you from barely managing to mastering change - not by doing more, zoning out or pretending you have all the answers. Chapter by chapter, you'll learn how to make the 'flips' that reframe your life, your leadership and your world. Discover how you can get out of your own way and realise the Zen leader in you.
The Secret
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002RI9UKE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1
In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller.
Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it.
In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life.
The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.
Be Obsessed Or Be Average: Why Work-Life Balance is for Losers
Before Grant Cardone built five successful companies (and counting), became a multimillionaire, and wrote bestselling books... he was broke, jobless, and drug-addicted. Grant had grown up with big dreams, but friends and family told him to be more reasonable and less demanding. If he played by the rules, they said, he could enjoy everyone else’s version of middle class success. But when he tried it their way, he hit rock bottom.
Then he tried the opposite approach. He said NO to the haters and naysayers and said YES to his burning, outrageous, animal obsession. He reclaimed his obsession with wanting to be a business rock star, a super salesman, a huge philanthropist. He wanted to live in a mansion and even own an airplane.
Obsession made all of his wildest dreams come true. And it can help you achieve massive success too. As Grant says, we're in the middle of an epidemic of average. The conventional wisdom is to seek balance and take it easy. But that has really just given us an excuse to be unexceptional.
If you want real success, you have to know how to harness your obsession to rocket to the top. This book will give you the inspiration and tools to break out of your cocoon of mediocrity and achieve your craziest dreams. Grant will teach you how to:
· Set crazy goals—and reach them, every single day.
· Feed the beast: when you value money and spend it on the right things, you get more of it.
· Shut down the doubters—and use your haters as fuel.
Whether you're a sales person, small business owner, or 9-to-5 working stiff, your path to happiness runs though your obsessions. It's a simple choice: be obsessed or be average.
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-Out-Box/dp/1576759776
This third edition of an international bestseller—over 2 million copies sold worldwide and translated into 33 languages—details how its powerful insights on motivation, conflict, and collaboration can benefit organizations as well as individuals.
Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become an international word-of-mouth phenomenon. Rather than tapering off, it sells more copies every year. The book's central insight—that the key to leadership lies not in what we do but in who we are—has proven to have powerful implications not only for organizational leadership but in readers' personal lives as well.
Leadership and Self-Deception uses an entertaining story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges at work and at home to expose the fascinating ways that we blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve happiness and increase happiness. We trap ourselves in a “box” of endless self-justification. Most importantly, the book shows us the way out. Readers will discover what millions already have learned—how to consistently tap into and act on their innate sense of what's right, dramatically improving all of their relationships.
This third edition includes new research about the self-deception gap in organizations and the keys to closing this gap. The authors offer guidance for how to assess the in-the-box and out-of-the-box mindsets in yourself and in your organization. It also includes a sample of Arbinger's latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset.
Oversubscribed: How To Get People Lining Up To Do Business With You
Are you constantly chasing customers? Why does it seem like some businesses have their customers begging to purchase their goods or services? Think about it for a moment. When a new iPhone is released, why do customers camp overnight to be the first through the door? In cities with thousands of great restaurants, why do some restaurants require reservations months in advance? Why is it that some consultants, accountants, lawyers and healthcare professionals can charge exponentially more than others? In the modern marketplace, consumer options are virtually endless, intense competition is rife and so much is given away for free online. Often businesses are left scrambling to attract enough customers to make a small profit. Yet the opposite is true for a small number of businesses that do things differently—customers chase them. They have buyers who gladly queue up, pay more, and eagerly wait for the chance to hand over their money for the next thing. How do these businesses do it? More importantly, how can you become one of them?
Oversubscribed is the guide to transforming your business into one which customers fight over! Author Daniel Priestley, a successful entrepreneur who has built and sold businesses around the world, shares proven, real-world methods that will not only grab customers’ attention, but will also have them lining up to buy from you. This invaluable guide will teach you how to drive demand for your products or services far beyond supply and will dramatically increase the success of your business. Now in its second edition, this updated version offers new insights and motivating examples that are right for the 2020s. This book will show you:
• The principles and philosophies Oversubscribed businesses live by that are often the opposite of what most businesses do
• Specific steps for getting into the mind of your customer so they only want to buy from your business
• How to structure campaigns and product launches that systematically get your business Oversubscribed
• How to implement a process of signalling to market, and collect signals back from market to build up desire and demand for your products and services
The new edition of Oversubscribed: How to get people lining up to do business with you is a must-read for entrepreneurs, marketers, business leaders and owners, team managers, and business students.
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind reveals the missing link between wanting success and achieving it!
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to get rich easily, while others are destined for a life of financial struggle? Is the difference found in their education, intelligence, skills, timing, work habits, contacts, luck, or their choice of jobs, businesses, or investments?
The shocking answer is: None of the above!
In his groundbreaking Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker states: "Give me five minutes, and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life!" Eker does this by identifying your "money and success blueprint." We all have a personal money blueprint ingrained in our subconscious minds, and it is this blueprint, more than anything, that will determine our financial lives. You can know everything about marketing, sales, negotiations, stocks, real estate, and the world of finance, but if your money blueprint is not set for a high level of success, you will never have a lot of money—and if somehow you do, you will most likely lose it! The good news is that now you can actually reset your money blueprint to create natural and automatic success.
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind is two books in one. Part I explains how your money blueprint works. Through Eker's rare combination of street smarts, humor, and heart, you will learn how your childhood influences have shaped your financial destiny. You will also learn how to identify your own money blueprint and "revise" it to not only create success but, more important, to keep and continually grow it.
In Part II you will be introduced to seventeen "Wealth Files," which describe exactly how rich people think and act differently than most poor and middle-class people. Each Wealth File includes action steps for you to practice in the real world in order to dramatically increase your income and accumulate wealth.
If you are not doing as well financially as you would like, you will have to change your money blueprint. Unfortunately your current money blueprint will tend to stay with you for the rest of your life, unless you identify and revise it, and that's exactly what you will do with the help of this extraordinary book. According to T. Harv Eker, it's simple. If you think like rich people think and do what rich people do, chances are you'll get rich too!
Think And Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill, America's most beloved motivational author, devoted 25 years to finding out how the wealthy became that way. After interviewing over 500 of the most affluent men and women of his time, he uncovered the secret to great wealth based on the notion that if we can learn to think like the rich, we can start to behave like them. By understanding and applying the thirteen simple steps that constitute Hill's formula, you can achieve your goals, change your life and join the ranks of the rich and successful.
In this updated edition, Dr. Arthur R. Pell provides examples of men and women who, in recent times, exemplify the principles that Hill promulgated. With the success stories of top achievers such as Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg, he proves that Hill's philosophies are as valid today as they ever were.
Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Strategies-Distraction/dp/0061771295
Emily and Paul are the parents of two young children, and professionals with different careers. Emily is the newly promoted vice president of marketing at a large corporation; Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their days are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.
In Your Brain at Work, David Rock goes inside Emily and Paul's brains to see how they function as each attempts to sort, prioritize, organize, and act on the vast quantities of information they receive in one typical day. Rock is an expert on how the brain functions in a work setting. By analyzing what is going on in their heads, he offers solutions Emily and Paul (and all of us) can use to survive and thrive in today's hyperbusy work environment―and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.
In Your Brain at Work, Rock explores issues such as:
• why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources
• why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions
• how to maximize the chance of finding insights to solve seemingly insurmountable problems
• how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible
• how to collaborate more effectively with others
• why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier
• how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior
• much much more.
Weekend Language: Presenting with More Stories and Less PowerPoint
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weekend-Language-Presenting-Stories-PowerPoint/dp/0988595613
Think about it: on weekends, we’re all great communicators because our default is storytelling. When we go to a party on Saturday night, we don’t talk about how we optimized our calendar last Wednesday to monetize our mission-critical, best-of-breed, seamless-solution-provider business. (If you do, that’s probably why you haven’t been invited back to many parties).
No, on the weekends our speech is conversational, simple, clear, and interesting. We speak in examples, anecdotes, and analogies. But then Monday morning hits. We step into the office and suddenly we’re full of feature lists and ten-point plans, “high level” terms and nonsense. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we beat the snot out of our audiences with 118-slide PowerPoint presentations chock-full of text. Audience members typically don’t remember anything from those types of presentations.
But they do remember stories. The approach and techniques found in this book are designed to help you replicate your existing strengths as a weekend storyteller so you can drag them into your weekday presentations to and conversations with customers, partners, employees, and investors. That way, you can be a great communicator every day of the week
Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Made-Stick-ideas-others-unstuck-ebook/dp/B0031RS2XG
Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.
Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
The 48 Laws Of Power
Drawn from 3,000 years of the history of power, this is the definitive guide to help readers achieve for themselves what Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, Louis XIV and Machiavelli learnt the hard way.
Law 1: Never outshine the master
Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies
Law 3: Conceal your intentions
Law 4: Always say less than necessary.
The text is bold and elegant, laid out in black and red throughout and replete with fables and unique word sculptures. The 48 laws are illustrated through the tactics, triumphs and failures of great figures from the past who have wielded - or been victimised by - power.
The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995
Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen?
Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their "official" ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
The widely adopted, now classic book on influence and persuasion—a major national and international bestseller with more than four million copies sold!
In this highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini—the seminal expert in the field of influence and persuasion—explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these principles ethically in business and everyday situations.
You’ll learn the six universal principles of influence and how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and, just as importantly, how to defend yourself against dishonest influence attempts:
Reciprocation: The internal pull to repay what another person has provided us.
Commitment and Consistency: Once we make a choice or take a stand, we work to behave consistently with that commitment in order to justify our decisions.
Social Proof: When we are unsure, we look to similar others to provide us with the correct actions to take. And the more, people undertaking that action, the more we consider that action correct.
Liking: The propensity to agree with people we like and, just as important, the propensity for others to agree with us, if we like them.
Authority: We are more likely to say “yes” to others who are authorities, who carry greater knowledge, experience or expertise.
Scarcity: We want more of what is less available or dwindling in availability.
Understanding and applying the six principles ethically is cost-free and deceptively easy. Backed by Dr. Cialdini’s 35 years of evidence-based, peer-reviewed scientific research—as well as by a three-year field study on what moves people to change behavior—Influence is a comprehensive guide to using these principles effectively to amplify your ability to change the behavior of others.
The Art of War
https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/1599869772
Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and civilization have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike.
Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shackletons-Way-Leadership-Antarctic-Explorer/dp/1857883187
Sir Ernest Shackleton has been called 'the greatest leader that ever came on God's earth, bar none' for saving the lives of the twenty-seven men stranded with him on an Antarctic ice floe for almost two years. Written by two veteran business observers, Shackleton's Way details universal leadership tactics set against the thrilling survival story of the Endurance expedition. Whether it's hiring good workers, supporting and inspiring employees to do their best, managing a crisis with limited personnel and resources, creating order out of chaos, or leading by personal example with optimism, egalitarianism, humour, strength, ingenuity, intelligence and compassion, Ernest Shackleton set an example we can all follow. Illustrated with photographer Frank Hurley's masterpieces and other rarely seen photos, Shackleton's Way is filled with fascinating and practical lessons of a leader who succeeded by putting people first and triumphing brilliantly when all the odds were against him.
Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-James-Kerr/dp/147210353X
In Legacy, best-selling author James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world’s most successful sporting team, the legendary All Blacks of New Zealand, to reveal 15 powerful and practical lessons for leadership and business.
Legacy is a unique, inspiring handbook for leaders in all fields, and asks: What are the secrets of success – sustained success? How do you achieve world-class standards, day after day, week after week, year after year? How do you handle pressure? How do you train to win at the highest level? What do you leave behind you after you’re gone?
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended-ebook/dp/B014DUR7L2
A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations—whether in the boardroom or at home.
After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles—counterintuitive tactics and strategies—you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
https://www.amazon.com/Shoe-Dog-Phil-Knight/dp/1508211809/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
In this instantand tenacious New York Times bestseller, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight “offers a rare and revealing look at the notoriously media-shy man behind the swoosh” (Booklist, starred review), illuminating his company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
Bill Gates named Shoe Dog one of his five favorite books of 2016 and called it “an amazing tale, a refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like. It’s a messy, perilous, and chaotic journey, riddled with mistakes, endless struggles, and sacrifice. Phil Knight opens up in ways few CEOs are willing to do.”
Fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and launched a company with one simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost running shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his car in 1963, Knight grossed eight thousand dollars that first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In this age of start-ups, Knight’s Nike is the gold standard, and its swoosh is one of the few icons instantly recognized in every corner of the world.
But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always been a mystery. In Shoe Dog, he tells his story at last. At twenty-four, Knight decides that rather than work for a big corporation, he will create something all his own, new, dynamic, different. He details the many risks he encountered, the crushing setbacks, the ruthless competitors and hostile bankers—as well as his many thrilling triumphs. Above all, he recalls the relationships that formed the heart and soul of Nike, with his former track coach, the irascible and charismatic Bill Bowerman, and with his first employees, a ragtag group of misfits and savants who quickly became a band of swoosh-crazed brothers.
Together, harnessing the electrifying power of a bold vision and a shared belief in the transformative power of sports, they created a brand—and a culture—that changed everything.
Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business
https://www.amazon.com/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402
Kanban is becoming a popular way to visualize and limit work-in-progress in software development and information technology work. Teams around the world are adding Kanban around their existing processes to catalyze cultural change and deliver better business agility. David J. Anderson pioneered the Kanban Method. Hear how this happened and what you can do to succeed using Kanban.
The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career Kindle Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Start-up-You-Future-Yourself-Transform-ebook/dp/B0050DIWHU
A blueprint for thriving in your job and building a career by applying the lessons of Silicon Valley’s most innovative entrepreneurs.
LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and author Ben Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world. The key is to manage your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you.
Why? Start-ups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.
These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.
This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or launching your own venture, you need to know how to:
• Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change.
• Develop a competitive advantage to win the best jobs and opportunities.
• Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships.
• Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth.
• Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis.
• Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions.
A revolutionary new guide to thriving in today's fractured world of work, the strategies in this book will help you survive and thrive and achieve your boldest professional ambitions. The Start-Up of You empowers you to become the CEO of your career and take control of your future.
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355
In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck?
Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?
Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes.
By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business
https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U
Now updated with new measurement methods and new examples, How to Measure Anything shows managers how to inform themselves in order to make less risky, more profitable business decisions.
This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered "immeasurable," including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI.
Adds new measurement methods, showing how they can be applied to a variety of areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction
Simplifies overall content while still making the more technical applications available to those readers who want to dig deeper
Continues to boldly assert that any perception of "immeasurability" is based on certain popular misconceptions about measurement and measurement methods
Shows the common reasoning for calling something immeasurable, and sets out to correct those ideas
Offers practical methods for measuring a variety of "intangibles"
Provides an online database (www.howtomeasureanything.com) of downloadable, practical examples worked out in detailed spreadsheets
Written by recognized expert Douglas Hubbard—creator of Applied Information Economics—How to Measure Anything, Third Edition illustrates how the author has used his approach across various industries and how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill defined, or uncertain can lend itself to measurement using proven methods.
Production-Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems Across an Engineering Organization
One of the biggest challenges for organizations that have adopted microservice architecture is the lack of architectural, operational, and organizational standardization. After splitting a monolithic application or building a microservice ecosystem from scratch, many engineers are left wondering what’s next. In this practical book, author Susan Fowler presents a set of microservice standards in depth, drawing from her experience standardizing over a thousand microservices at Uber. You’ll learn how to design microservices that are stable, reliable, scalable, fault tolerant, performant, monitored, documented, and prepared for any catastrophe.
Explore production-readiness standards, including:
Stability and Reliability: develop, deploy, introduce, and deprecate microservices; protect against dependency failures
Scalability and Performance: learn essential components for achieving greater microservice efficiency
Fault Tolerance and Catastrophe Preparedness: ensure availability by actively pushing microservices to fail in real time
Monitoring: learn how to monitor, log, and display key metrics; establish alerting and on-call procedures
Documentation and Understanding: mitigate tradeoffs that come with microservice adoption, including organizational sprawl and technical debt
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592
Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.
The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill's entire department will be outsourced.
With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.
In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never view IT the same way again.
Videos and other Media
Improvement Pill Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBIt1VN5j37PVM8LLSuTTlw
Taken like a multi-vitamin...but for your mind. Improvement Pill is dedicated towards conveying important ideas to those who are willing to change. Each video is designed to inspire,motivate, or teach you something that can change your life.
If you want something in your life to change, then you'll have to change your choices and actions. That is because doing the same thing will never get you different results.
John C. Maxwell
Big Think Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/bigthink/featured
"Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson."
The School of Life Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel
The School of Life is an organisation dedicated to helping people lead more fulfilled lives. We help people understand themselves, improve their relationships, their careers and their social lives - as well as find calm and get more out of their leisure hours. We do this through our films, our workshops and a range of our own books. You can find us online, in our London HQ and in welcoming branches around the world.
People & Blogs
Patrick Collison
https://patrickcollison.com/about
Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur from County Tipperary. He is the co-founder and CEO of Stripe, which he started with his younger brother, John, in 2010. He won the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005 at the age of sixteen.
His blog is well worth a follow and has lots of interesting business stories, links to articles and books around culture, people, business growth and much more.
Aidan McCullen
https://medium.com/thethursdaythought
Aidan is a Senior Consultant with Flow Consulting Group. He works with organisations to radically change how they interact and engage with each other. Aidan is a champion for change and has evolved in his own career after rugby. Aidan worked in transformation for digital, innovation and now culture and leadership.
He developed the digital eco-system for Communicorp Media Group, served as Head of Innovation for RTE (Ireland's national broadcaster), worked as an innovation consultant for Global innovation consultancy Katawave and sat on the board of the Irish Internet Association.
Aidan is also the host and founder of the Global Innovation Show, broadcast on RTE and listened to all over the globe and writer of The Thursday Thought weekly blog
Casandra Brené Brown
https://brenebrown.com/
Casandra Brené Brown PhD LMSW is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation – Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work.
She has spent her career studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of five #1 New York Times best sellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and her latest book, Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership.
Brown's TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 35 million views. View it here
She is also the first person to have a filmed talk available on Netflix. The Call to Courage special debuted on the streaming service on April 19, 2019.
Bill Gates
https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/
A veteran of the tech world, Bill Gates is an investor, author, philanthropist, and co-founder of Microsoft. Gates has a lot of valuable insights and experiences from his time at Microsoft and ongoing work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Whether he’s having a chat with Steven Pinker about human happiness or sharing breakthrough research in the clean energy sector, his educational posts on LinkedIn cater to a range of interests.
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