Leadership Wise - Why Business Books Suck, But Wise Leaders Succeed

Why do so many business books feel useless the moment they come in contact with your day job?
 
Business books often contradict one another, each providing advice that's only helpful some of the time, and exhaustingly, your boss is going to cherry pick only the books that suit their way of working.
 
Additionally, too often leadership books push fundamentally changing your personality to look like some idealized leader, often some dude. That dude may not even be a business leader! They might be a marine, a mountain climber, or a politician. Their stories might inspire you to summit Everest, but they're not going to help you figure out the looming company merger or what to do with that struggling manager
 
In Leadership Wise, Chief Product Officer at Podium, John Foreman, delivers a different and refreshingly practical take on business leadership. The author moves beyond what a leader should look like, to discuss how you can make better decisions over time to help your organization accomplish its goals. Regardless of a reader's personality and background, John provides practical advice for how anyone can become a great leader just as they are by making more effective decisions over and over again. It's not about becoming a 5-star general or a mythical titan of industry, it's about making better decisions more often. In the book you'll find:
* A structure for understanding and becoming comfortable with the unending contradictions of leading in business
* Strategies for defining priorities, sourcing options, and choosing the best decision
* Advice for channeling your emotions and company culture to more effectively solve problems
 
An engaging and hands-on exploration of how to lead real people in real companies by making the best decisions possible with the information you have, Leadership Wise belongs on the desks of managers, executives, directors, entrepreneurs, and founders everywhere.

List of contents

A Few Things Up Front xv
 
Chapter 1 Business Books Suck 1
 
Context Is Everything: Do Things That [Don't?] Scale 6
 
What If I Said That Bad Leaders Are Too Consistent? 11
 
Introducing Wisdom Literature 12
 
The Facebook Uncle Dilemma 14
 
Chapter 2 Let's Warm Up! Ten Business Choices Where One Option and Its Opposite Both Have Merit 19
 
Let's Take a "Walk Around the Business" 22
 
People 24
 
A Players vs. B Players 25
 
Accountability vs. Blamelessness 30
 
Inputs vs. Outputs 34
 
Far vs. Fast 36
 
Process 39
 
Speed vs. Order 40
 
Specialization vs. Generalization 41
 
Top Down vs. Bottom Up 45
 
Product 49
 
Good vs. Great 50
 
Bundling vs. Unbundling 52
 
Build vs. Buy 55
 
I Didn't Give You Answers; I Gave You Options 57
 
Let's Do a Little Exercise 59
 
Chapter 3 Generating Options 61
 
Let's Get This Out of the Way: Consult Yourself 64
 
Consult Your Co- workers and Customers 66
 
Set Expectations in These Conversations: You're Just Gathering Input 67
 
Consult Your Network 69
 
Go Ahead, Read the Business Books! 70
 
Management by Metaphor 71
 
What Are My Levers? Chart Options Against Your Decision Levers 79
 
Using All the Parts of the Animal 81
 
Pull a "10th Man Rule" 82
 
Checking In on Our Exercise 84
 
Wisdom Literature Would Suggest None of These Options Is "Wrong" 84
 
Isn't This Overkill? "Paralysis by Analysis" 85
 
Over- confidently Incorrect 86
 
This Needn't Take Long 86
 
Analysis Paralysis Is All About Objectives, Not Options 87
 
Chapter 4 What's Your Objective? 89
 
A Problem Isn't a Priority 91
 
Two Words to Know and Love: Minimize and Maximize 93
 
Is It Possible to Love Two Objectives at the Same Time? 96
 
Turn Priorities Into Constraints 100
 
Chapter 5a A Brief Interlude 103
 
There's Plenty of Book Left! 104
 
Chapter 5 Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself 107
 
Going Deeper with Data 108
 
Is an Anecdote Data? 109
 
Quantitative vs. Qualitative Who Wants Pretty Good Pizza? 110
 
Priorities and Constraints Come First 112
 
You Know What They Say About Assumptions 112
 
Default to Learning Fast and Iterating 113
 
Not All Who Wander Are Lost 114
 
One- way vs. Two- Way Doors or Are They Streets? Two- Way Things 117
 
Do a Premortem 121
 
Blazing Through Covering Your Ass 127
 
Chapter 6 Making the Most of Execution 129
 
Make Your Decisions "Fully Loaded" 131
 
"Use All the Parts of the Animal" 133
 
Establish Success and Failure Criteria Up Front 135
 
Be Transparent, But Commit to the Bit! 139
 
Transparency Costs You Nothing 140
 
What's "My Part of Our Whole?" 142
 
Commit to the Bit 143
 
There Is No Separation of Mind and Body 144
 
Chapter 7 "Keeping It Real" 147
 
Emotions Are Shortcuts 148
 
Diving a Little Deeper into My Knee- Jerk Reactions 150
 
All Feelings Are Valid. Always Acting Out of Them Is Neither Authentic nor Beneficial 155
 
A Process for Becoming Increasingly Authentic 157
 
Start with Post Facto Reflection 160
 
Positive Reinforcement Is the Feedback Loop That May in Fact Change You 163
 
That's Cool. But It Doesn't Apply to Me 164
 
Enough with This Woo- Woo Feelings Stuff 166
 
Chapter 8 Shaping the Company for Success 167
 
Company Culture

About the author

JOHN W. FOREMAN is the Chief Product Officer for Podium, a Google Ventures and Y Combinator backed tech startup that's reshaping how local businesses operate and grow. Prior to Podium, John Foreman was Chief Product Officer of Mailchimp, which ultimately sold to Intuit for twelve billion dollars. John has built software to help millions of businesses succeed for over a decade.
While John's work is in leading R&D for tech companies, his background is in data science and artificial intelligence. His first book, Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight, helped professionals around the world learn how to apply artificial intelligence techniques in their own fields.

Summary

Why do so many business books feel useless the moment they come in contact with your day job?

Business books often contradict one another, each providing advice that's only helpful some of the time, and exhaustingly, your boss is going to cherry pick only the books that suit their way of working.

Additionally, too often leadership books push fundamentally changing your personality to look like some idealized leader, often some dude. That dude may not even be a business leader! They might be a marine, a mountain climber, or a politician. Their stories might inspire you to summit Everest, but they're not going to help you figure out the looming company merger or what to do with that struggling manager

In Leadership Wise, Chief Product Officer at Podium, John Foreman, delivers a different and refreshingly practical take on business leadership. The author moves beyond what a leader should look like, to discuss how you can make better decisions over time to help your organization accomplish its goals. Regardless of a reader's personality and background, John provides practical advice for how anyone can become a great leader just as they are by making more effective decisions over and over again. It's not about becoming a 5-star general or a mythical titan of industry, it's about making better decisions more often. In the book you'll find:
* A structure for understanding and becoming comfortable with the unending contradictions of leading in business
* Strategies for defining priorities, sourcing options, and choosing the best decision
* Advice for channeling your emotions and company culture to more effectively solve problems

An engaging and hands-on exploration of how to lead real people in real companies by making the best decisions possible with the information you have, Leadership Wise belongs on the desks of managers, executives, directors, entrepreneurs, and founders everywhere.

Product details

• Authors: Foreman, John W Foreman, John W. Foreman, Foreman John W.
• Publisher: Wiley, John and Sons Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.10.2023
• EAN: 9781394191680
• ISBN: 978-1-394-19168-0
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Guides > Law, job, finance; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Business administration, companies; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; Management, Führung, Business & management, Wirtschaft u. Management, Management f. Führungskräfte, Management / Leadership