Making Purpose Work

Summary:

Making Purpose Work explores why it’s difficult for people to change. Over a four year period, Franchee Harmon took time out from the work she had been doing as a strategic consultant to companies and venture capital firms. During that time, she explored the issues preventing change in the lives of those of us seeking to do more than just work 40 plus hours a week. What she found was that five forces continually stop us from leading lives better than the ones we currently have, chief among these stumbling blocks is fear.

Ms. Harmon doesn’t seek to tell the reader how to use these forces to create change, instead shares insight she hopes the reader will make his or her own to do the challenging work it takes to bring about real change in one’s life.

Purpose

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The Medici Effect

Summary:

Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.

Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.

Survival is not enough

Summary:

You can’t embrace change any faster…can’t make time for the synergy training workshop…can’t deal with one more change management seminar. So stop changing. Evolve.

Evolution can be unleashed in your organization, effortlessly and gradually changing everything in its path. By teaching your company to “zoom” — embrace change without pain — you’ll have a company that evolves and ultimately attracts people who drive it to evolve even faster.

In up or down markets, for companies in any industry, embrace the organic approach detailed in Survival Is Not Enough and you will always outperform the competition.

Here’s practical advice on how to make the chaos we all must deal with an asset, not a threat.

The Tipping Point

Summary:

This celebrated New York Times best seller now poised to reach an even wider audience in paperbackis a book that is changing the way North Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwells new afterword to this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. Widely hailed as an important work that offers not only a road map to business success but also a profoundly encouraging approach to solving social problems.

The Upside of the Downturn

Summary:

Some businesses – and some people – will emerge from this downturn stronger and more dominant than when it started. Others will weaken and fade. It all depends on critical choices they make right now.

Geoff Colvin, one of America’s most respected business journalists, says even the scariest recession has an upside. The best managers know conventional thinking won’t help them win in these tough times. They’re taking smart, practical steps that will not only keep them strong, but will also distance them from the pack for years to come.

The dozens of top-performing leaders Colvin interviewed reject the common view that slashing costs and firing employees are all that matter. They see the recession as a rich opportunity to reinvent their organizations and lay the groundwork for future growth.

Why some Companies Emerge Stronger

Summary:

Crises aren’t limited to computer breaches, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Unfortunately, more crises have occurred in the past few years than in the 20 years before that. Too many organizations react to crisis instead of making crisis management a part of its organization like human resources and finance.

The unusual way of doing business in the past has become the normal way of doing business today. Crisis doesn’t have boundaries, so it can affect a company across the board rather than in silos.

Mitroff works to change attitudes and philosophy required to ensure a company correctly implements crisis management rather than addressing the basics of crisis management. The basics won’t matter if companies have the wrong attitude.