Navigating Integrity

By Al Watts Learn how to be a "triple-E" (effective, engaging and ethical) leader and organization by mastering four integrity challenges: Identity, Authenticity, Alignment and Accountability. My new book goes beyond integrity as a desirable character trait, and positions it at the heart of sustainable cultures and business strategy. Preview / Order

Sun Tzu's The Art of War

This is the original authoritative translation of the Art of War, by revered 4th century B.C. military strategist Sun Tzu. Each of the 13 chapters addresses an aspect of warfare and gaining competitive advantage, including offensive and defensive strategies, maintaining spirit and discipline among troops and avoiding battle altogether. The Art of War has been a source of inspiration and strategy for those in business, law, politics and the military for centuries. Preview / Order

Your Strategy Needs A Strategy

These Boston Consulting Group authors provide helpful guidelines determining which of 5 basic approaches to crafting strategy are right for your organization — Be Big, Be Fast, Be First, Be the Orchestrator, or simply Be Viable—depending on the extent of predictability, malleability, and harshness. One size does not fit all, and it pays to evaluate one's strategic context to avoid a costly mismatch. Preview / Order

Grit

Angela Duckworth, a celebrated researcher and professor, shows us why passion and perseverance trump purely intelligence and other traditional traditional predictors of success. Discover how grit can be learned, the Hard Thing Rule and more strategies for achieving in life and work. Preview / Order

The Oz Principle

Originally published in 1994, The Oz Principle remains one of the most insightful and useful resources for improving personal, team and organizational accountability. Learn how to "See it," "Own it," "Solve it" and "Do it" to break through performance limitations. Preview / Order

Disciplined Dreaming

After making the case for why we need to ramp up creativity in organizations, ePrize CEO Josh Linker does an excellent job telling us how. This is a very useful guide for linking creativity with purpose, values and strategic goals, along with dozens of practical tools for priming, igniting and executing breakthrough thinking. Preview / Order

A Force For Good

In his follow-up book to Stewardship, John Taft and contributors examine how financial industry players have strayed from their important social purposes and how they can once again serve as "a force for good." Chapter authors compose a "who's who" list of financial industry and business ethics leaders; while their focus is the financial industry, any readers desiring to strengthen capitalism's role serving communities will enjoy this book. Preview / Order

Return On Character

Fred Kiel does a marvelous job of demonstrating the bottom line return on character, reviews "nature" and "nurture" dimensions of character development, and provides practical insights for how to develop strength of character in leaders, executive teams and organizational culture. Preview / Order

The Way of the Seal

This is an outstanding resource for performing at our best, written by a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Commander. It is a rich source of inspiration and resources for the inner work required to be an elite operator in life and work. Highly recommended. Preview / Order

The Leadership Challenge, 5th ed

If you have only one authoritative book on what constitutes leadership, this gets my vote. Here is Kouze's and Posner's latest edition of their bestseller that caps 25 years of research on how to lead for extraordinary results. Preview / Order

Total Leadership

Stewart Friedman and I share a common conviction: leadership "starts and ends with the person - not the business person, but the whole person." (Friedman) Total Leadership is a clear, provocative guide for being real, acting with integrity and being creative in ways that produce "four-way wins" for self, family, work and our communities; I highly recommend it. Preview / Order

Life Reimagined

Richard's latest best seller is packed with inspirational and practical tools for reimagining our lives and work at any age. Readers in the second half of life especially will find this book indispensable, but any reader seeking renewed purpose will benefit. Preview / Order

The Pause Principle

This may be not just a book, but a movement - "for pausing to power purposeful performance." Kevin makes a convincing case backed by research for pausing in our lives and work to lead richer lives, become stronger leaders, develop others and power innovation. His latest book includes 21 practical ways of "stepping back to lead forward," and examples of the payoff from Korn Ferry's world-wide practice. Preview / Order

Stewardship - Lessons Learned from the Lost Culture of Wall Street

Here is a clear, sobering account of Wall Street's implosion in 2008, accompanied by advice to investors and their agents for restoring integrity and value to financial services. John Taft knows of which he speaks; the grandson of Senator Robert A. Taft (named "Mr. Integrity" by John F. Kennedy) and great grandson of President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, John is the CEO of RBC Wealth Management in the U.S. and past Chairman (2011) of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Highly recommended for any leader, especially in financial services, and anyone concerned with the sustainability of financial markets. Preview / Order

Conscious Capitalism

Reinforcing Bill Gates' call for "creative capitalism" and Michael Porter's concept of "shared value capitalism," Mackey's and Sisodia's new book demonstrate how successful companies serve a purpose beyond making money and consider the needs of all stakeholders. Preview / Order