Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

Author: Kenneth O. Stanley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319155245
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -- and nearly everything in-between -- our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity. Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

Author: Kenneth O. Stanley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783319155234
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Ordinary Greatness

Author: Pamela Bilbrey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470524855
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
How to leverage ordinary greatness to create a competitive advantage for any organization Enabling readers to maximize leadership skills, no matter the venue, Ordinary Greatness helps those who are in leadership positions to optimize their organizational results by improving their ability to recognize and create greatness in those who they lead. Featuring real-world stories, this practical guide helps readers relate to both famous and everyday heroes and shows leaders how to improve their immediate environment. In addition, actionable tips and insights are included to equip business leaders to remove the blinders that keep them from seeing their organization's ordinary greatness. Pamela Bilbrey and Brian Jones are organizational consultants, executive coaches, and international speakers and workshop facilitators

There's No Plan B for Your A-Game

Author: Bo Eason
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250210844
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Washington Post Bestseller Wall Street Journal Bestseller USA Today Bestseller Publishers Weekly Bestseller Do you want to change the course of your life? Do you want to be the best? The best manager, the best athlete, the best artist, the best speaker, the best parent? In There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game, former pro athlete, playwright, and acclaimed leadership coach Bo Eason shows you exactly what it takes to be the best. His proven tools and training have worked for Olympic medalists, military leaders, bestselling authors, professional athletes, and business executives and their teams. There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game explains how to develop the character, integrity, and commitment it takes to become the best. Bo Eason focuses on a winning four-step process that helps you attain the skill, maintain the effort, and persist through challenges: Declaration: What do you want to achieve? Preparation: How can you make it happen? Acceleration: Where will you find the stamina to reach your goal? Domination: Why do you take others with you? With inspiring, specific, real-word guidance, There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game teaches the best practices that lead to the best results, in every walk of life.

The IMPACT! Body Plan

Author: Todd Durkin
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1605290718
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Todd Durkin is the most sought-after personal trainer in sports, and if you don't know his name, you've definitely seen his work. He is the man who helped world-class athletes such as quarterback Drew Brees win a Super Bowl MVP, pitcher Cole Hamels win a World Series MVP, and professional snowboarder Shaun White win two Olympic gold medals. He is known throughout sports as the one trainer who can use any person’s unique raw materials to transform them into—quite literally—the best they can be. Now Durkin has tailored his elite training program for anyone looking to transform their bodies. Based on groundbreaking “muscle matrix” research, Durkin’s program is designed to adapt to your body to help you shed flab, build strength and flexibility, and enhance your athletic performance.

The Road Ahead

Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring

Lift

Author: Ryan W. Quinn
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626564027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Just as the Wright Brothers combined science and practice to finally realize the dream of flight, Ryan and Robert Quinn combine research and personal experience to demonstrate how to reach a psychological state that elevates us and those around us to greater heights of achievement, integrity, openness, and empathy. It's the psychological equivalent of aerodynamic lift, and it is the fundamental state of leadership. This book draws on recent advances in positive psychology and organizational science to describe four questions that, when asked in any situation, will help us experience the fundamental state of leadership. Engaging personal stories illustrate how the Quinns and others have applied these concepts at work, at home, and in the community. --

Good to Great

Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0066620996
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
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. 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. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

The 48 Laws of Power

Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0670881465
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)

Author: Ed Catmull
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644504
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.