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The Richest Man in Babylon
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by George S. Clason
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ISBN: 0451205367, Paperback- $6.99 BUY
I often give this book out as a gift whenever a person younger than me asks for my advice on money. I always present this book to them saying "if you read it and do as it says, it will work magic." It really contains excellent, time tested advice, and would make a good gift for someone in their early 20s who is on their own for the first time, and struggling.
The book is a series of parables about money written in the 1920s by George Clason. They were written as individual essays of a few thousand words, but the theme throughout them is consistent -- save 10% of your money, give 10% away, use 10% to reduce your debt load, and live on the remaining 70%.
The stories in the book are entertaining; they are reminiscent of some of the parables in the Bible, such as the Prodigal Son or the story of the Workers in the Vineyard. I think this is intentional on the part of the author; certainly readers in the 1920s had an appreciation for "old fashioned stories with a moral" that people today seem to have lost. I enjoy the book greatly, though, and any thoughtful person who reads the book should find it interesting, especially if they are trying to get their finances in order.
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The Millionaire Next Door
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by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
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ISBN: 0671015206, Paperback- $15.00 BUY
How can you join the ranks of America's wealthy (defined as people whose net worth is over one million dollars)? It's easy, say doctors Stanley and Danko, who have spent the last 20 years interviewing members of this elite club: you just have to follow seven simple rules. The first rule is, always live well below your means. The last rule is, choose your occupation wisely. You'll have to buy the book to find out the other five. It's only fair. The authors' conclusions are commonsensical. But, as they point out, their prescription often flies in the face of what we think wealthy people should do. There are no pop stars or athletes in this book, but plenty of wall-board manufacturers--particularly ones who take cheap, infrequent vacations! Stanley and Danko mercilessly show how wealth takes sacrifice, discipline, and hard work, qualities that are positively discouraged by our high-consumption society. "You aren't what you drive," admonish the authors. Somewhere, Benjamin Franklin is smiling.
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Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
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by T. Harv Eker
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ISBN: 10: 0060763280, Hardcover- $14.95 BUY
Eker's claim to fame is that he took a $2,000 credit card loan, opened "one of the first fitness stores in North America," turned it into a chain of 10 within two and a half years and sold it in 1987 for a cool (but somewhat modest-seeming) $1.6 million. Now the Vancouver-based entrepreneur traverses the continent with his "Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar," on which this debut motivational business manual is based. What sets it apart is Eker's focus on the way people think and feel about money and his canny, class-based analyses of broad differences among groups. In rat-a-tat, "Let me explain" seminar-speak, Eker asks readers to think back to their childhoods and pick apart the lessons they passively absorbed from parents and others about money. With such psychological nuggets as "Rich people focus on opportunities/ Poor people focus on obstacles," Eker puts a positive spin on stereotypes, arguing that poverty begins, or rather, is allowed to continue, in one's imagination first, with actual material life becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. To that end, Eker counsels for admiration and against resentment, for positivity, self-promotion and thinking big and against wallowing, self-abnegation and small-mindedness. While much of the advice is self-evident, Eker's contribution is permission to think of one's financial foibles as a kind of mental illness?one, he says, that has a ready set of cures.
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Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
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by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter
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ISBN: 0446677450, Paperback- $16.95 BUY
Rich Dad, Poor Dad chronicles the story of the authors two dads, his own father, who was the superintendent of education in Hawaii and who ended up dying penniless and his best friends father who dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Kiyosaki uses the story of these two men and their varying financial strategies to illustrate the need for a new financial paradigm in order to achieve financial success in the new millennium.
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Worry-Free Family Finances: Three Steps to Building and Maintaining Your Family's Financial Well-Being
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by Bill and Mary Stanton
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ISBN: 978-0071409841, Paperback- $14.95 BUY
An Easy-to-Follow Approach for Building Family Financial Security--With the Emphasis on Family--Too many family finance books today concentrate only on finance--and leave out the family. Worry-Free Family Finances ignores elaborate formulas and techniques to outline a low-maintenance, step-by-step program you can use to:
Eliminate debt without negatively affecting your lifestyle
Create a 60-minutes-a-year, one-sheet-of-paper family budget
Become a millionaire by saving and investing as little as $50 a month
It's no secret that money worries are a leading cause of family distress. Let Worry-Free Family Finances show you how to bring financial security to your family the easy, smart way--and still have plenty of time left over for what's really important.
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Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
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by Jim Collins
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ISBN: 0066620996, Hardcover- $16.50 BUY
Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great, Collins concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success.
Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come.
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Get Better or Get Beaten
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by Robert Slater
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ISBN: 0071373462, Hardcover- $22.95 BUY
Do business like Jack Welch! When Jack Welch took the reins of General Electric in 1981, he reformulated GE in his own image -- tough, smart, competitive, and relentless. First published in 1994, Get Better or Get Beaten became a bestseller as managers sought to understand and mimic the success of the man lauded by Fortune as "...perhaps the most admired CEO of his generation."
Now, on the eve of his planned April retirement, the new Get Better or Get Beaten, Second Edition shows you how to compete "Welch style" in today's techologically advanced business arena.
Look to this fast-paced book for:
- Jack Welch's latest views on management and leadership
- Examples of how Welch transformed GE into an e-business
- Insights into Six Sigma and other successful GE quality initiatives
- and More...
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The E-Myth Manager - Why Management Doesn't Work-And What to Do About It
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by Michael E. Gerber
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ISBN: 0887309593, Paperback- $11.02 BUY
More than ten years after his first bestselling book, The E-Myth, changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of small business owners, Michael Gerber - entrepreneur, author, and speaker extraordinaire fires the next salvo in his highly successful E-Myth Revolution. Drawing on lessons learned from working with more than 15,000 small, medium-sized, and very large organizations, Gerber has discovered the truth behind why management doesn't workand what to do about it.
Unearthing the arbitrary origins of commonly held doctrines such as the omniscience of leader (Emperor) and the most widely embraced myth of all. The E-Myth Manager offers a fresh, provocative alternative to management as we know it. It explores why every manager must take charge of his own life, reconcile his own personal vision with that of the organization, and develop an entrepreneurial mind-set to achieve true success.
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The E-Myth Revisited - Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
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by Michael E. Gerber
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ISBN: 0887307280, Paperback- $9.60 BUY
Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited should be required reading for anyone thinking about starting a business or for those who have already taken that fateful step. The title refers to the author's belief that entrepreneurs--typically brimming with good but distracting ideas--make poor business people. He establishes an incredibly organized and regimented plan, so that daily details are scripted, freeing the entrepreneur's mind to build the long-term success of the business. You don't need an M.B.A. to understand or follow its directives; Gerber takes time to explain buzzwords and complex theories. Read in a clear and well-paced manner, listening to The-E Myth is like receiving advice from an old friend.
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The Myth of Excellence - Why Great Companies Never Try to Be the Best at Everything
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by Fred Crawford, Ryan Mathews
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ISBN: 0609608207, Hardcover- $19.25 BUY
Crawford is the managing director of the consumer products, retail, and distribution practice at the Cap Gemini Ernst and Young consultancy. Mathews is a futurist specializing in demographics and lifestyle analysis at FirstMatter, another consulting firm. To research purchasing behavior, they surveyed 5,000 consumers, but the responses they got surprised them and prompted their title's contrary proposition.
They developed a new model of "consumer relevancy." They explain in detail the importance of price, service, quality, access, and experience for the consumer. They then suggest that for companies to be successful they need to dominate on only one of these five factors. On a second of the five they should stand out or differentiate themselves from their competitors; and on the remaining three they need only to be at par with others in their industry. With dozens of examples, Crawford and Mathews demonstrate the validity of their premise.
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Raving Fans - A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service
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by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0688123163, Hardcover- $13.00 BUY
Kenneth Blanchard continues his trend of writing easy-to-read books with BIG ideas for making your business better. Raving Fans is a book of stories relating how fictional companies have created an environment of delivering awesome customer service. A guy that has just been put in a managment position requiring a turnaround goes on a fictional trip with his "angel" to visit businesses that have figured out their vision and their system to deliver customer service extraordinary. Based on three simple principles (Decide, Discover, Deliver), each company has created a group of Raving Fans (not just customers, but fans) who wouldn't consider shopping anywhere else for what one of these companies offers.
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Think and Grow Rich
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by Napoleon Hill
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ISBN: 0449214923, Paperback- $7.19 BUY
Is it true that by simply changing your thoughts you can completely change what you have in life? How could it be that simple? It is, but first you have to believe.
Most people want to see something happen, then believe in it. To be succesful you have to do the opposite. Believe in it first, then you will see it. That's is one of the key messages in this book written almost 70 years ago.... It reads like it was written yesterday.
The title says it all. "Think and Grow Rich", but it is NOT just a book about making money. I am certain many people from all walks of life could benefit from this work, regardless of their opinion of money and riches. The message is clear: You may have whatever you want in life... if you can discover the secret within its pages.
I first read this book when I was a teenager. I am not sure it made much of an impression on me. I picked it up recently and I can't believe how much it has changed. Of course, that's nonsense. The book is the same, only my mind is now ready to see what the secret is...
Get this book and see if you can unlock the Secret to finding 'riches' for yourself.
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First, Break All the Rules - What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
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by Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman
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ISBN: 0684852861, Hardcover- $18.90 BUY
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."
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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Restoring the Character Ethic
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by Stephen R. Covey
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ISBN: 0671708635, Paperback- $11.20 BUY
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas.
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Execution - The Discipline of Getting Things Done
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by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0609610570, Hardcover- $17.33 BUY
Disciplines like strategy, leadership development, and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute.
Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job.
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How to Make Your Business Run Without You!
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by Susan M. Carter
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ISBN: 0967029104, Paperback- $26.60 BUY
How To Make Your Business Run Without You is a how-to resource for small business owners and entrepreneurs to effectively streamline operations that will pave the way for more business, bigger profits and a business that virtually runs itself. Through step-by-step chapters, Author Susan Carter advances readers from the high-risk potential of 'owning their own jobs' to the freedom and control of 'owning their own businesses.' A must read for any owner or self-employed professional who is eager to move from start-up status to ongoing success.
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Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround
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by Louis V. Gerstner
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ISBN: 0060523794, Hardcover- $17.61 BUY
Gerstner quarterbacked one of history's most dramatic corporate turnarounds. For those who follow business stories like football games, his tale of the rise, fall and rise of IBM might be the ultimate slow-motion replay. The book's opening section snappily reports Gerstner's decisions in his first 18 months on the job-the critical "sprint" that moved IBM away from the brink of destruction. The following sections describe the marathon fight to make IBM once again "a company that mattered."
One of Gerstner's first tasks was to redirect the company's attention to the outside world, where a marketplace was quickly changing and customers felt largely ignored. He succeeded mightily. Upon his retirement this year, IBM was undeniably "a company that mattered." Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? is a well-rendered self-portrait of a CEO who made spectacular change on the strength of personal leadership.
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McDonald's - Behind the Arches
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by John F. Love
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ISBN: 0553347594, Paperback- $11.05 BUY
McDonald's: it is the world's premier entrepreneurial success story, a company whose growth worldwide continues to be astonishing. In tough financial times, McDonald's proved that ingenuity, trial and error, and gut instinct were the keys to building a service business the entire world has come to admire. In the years since McDonald's: Behind The Arches was first published, McDonald's has been a trendsetter in advertising, focusing on different ethnic groups as well as the physically disabled.
McDonald's created McJobs, a program that employs both mentally challenged adults and senior citizens. And because its franchisees have their fingers on the pulse of the marketplace, McDonald's has evolved successfully with the health food revolution, launching dozens of new products and moving toward environmentally-safe packaging and recyclable goods. Inspiring, informative, and filled with behind the scenes stories, this remarkable saga offers an irresistible look inside a great American business success.
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Differentiate or Die - Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition
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by Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0471357642, Hardcover- $17.61 BUY
There are no two ways about it with Jack Trout. Either you've got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don't have much at all. In today's global marketplace and at its lightning-fast rate of change, there's no point in inventing and presenting a product only to sit back and hope that consumers everywhere will discover its greatness. It's not simply about what you or your product can do, it's about what you do differently from everyone else. Coauthors Trout and Steve Rivkin say it all in their no-holds-barred title, Differentiate or Die.
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Competing on Value
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by Mack Hanan, Peter Karp (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0814450369, Hardcover- $17.47 BUY
Presents a new approach to selling that emphasizes not competing on the basis of the best price, but the highest value--i.e. demonstrating to current and prospective customers that using your products or services will either cut their costs or improve their revenues. This book discusses VALUE. Value is not what you put INTO your products and services, it is what the customer GETS OUT. Three qualifiers of value are how much, how soon, and how sure--these are what the customer needs to know. In summary, this is highly recommended for every company that sells products and/or services.
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Inside The Magic Kingdom - 7 Keys to Disney's Success
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by Thomas K. Connellan
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ISBN: 1885167237, Hardcover- $13.00 BUY
Look in Mickey's Briefcase . . . Now, an outsider takes you inside the incredible Disney service culture and presents simple, powerful concepts in a fun, memorable way that just may change the way you conduct business. Based on hours of interviews and discussions with present and former Disney employees, Inside the Magic Kingdom discloses the secrets behind Disneys success . . . and explains why, of its more than 30 million guests each year, over two-thirds are repeat customers.
This upbeat, easy-to-read book illustrates clear, solid principles with examples that are well-known to Disney insiders but virtually unknown to outsiders until now. Outlines the seven keys to Disney's success. Now the principles that drive the culture and phenomenal success of Disney are disclosed in this fun, easy-to-read book. You will learn many insider secrets that will spell success if implemented in any business.
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Practice What You Preach - What Managers Must Do to Create a High-Achievement Culture
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by David H. Maister
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ISBN: 0743211871, Hardcover- $18.20 BUY
Maister, a professional service consultant, surveyed 6,500 employees at 50 worldwide companies to evaluate the relationship between company financial performance and employee satisfaction and loyalty. He found a direct and dramatic correlation. Here, he offers detailed commentary from CEOs, managers and staffers, and analysis of the survey results. Bosses in all kinds of companies will benefit from his solid advice, which should be required reading for executives and upper level managers.
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Why We Buy - The Science of Shopping
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by Paco Underhill
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ISBN: 0684849143, Paperback- $9.75 BUY
In an effort to determine why people buy, Paco Underhill and his band of retail researchers have camped out in stores over the course of 20 years, dedicating their lives to the "science of shopping." Armed with an array of video equipment, store maps, and customer-profile sheets, Underhill and his consulting firm, Envirosell, have observed over 900 aspects of interaction between shopper and store. They've discovered that men who take jeans into fitting rooms are more likely to buy than females (65 percent vs. 25 percent).
They've learned how the "butt-brush factor" (bumped from behind, shoppers become irritated and move elsewhere) makes women avoid narrow aisles. They've quantified the importance of shopping baskets; contact between employees and shoppers; the "transition zone" (the area just inside the store's entrance); and "circulation patterns" (how shoppers move throughout a store). And they've explored the relationship between a customer's amenability and profitability, learning how good stores capitalize on a shopper's unspoken inclinations and desires.
Underhill, whose clients include McDonald's, Starbucks, Est?Lauder, and Blockbuster, stocks Why We Buy with a wealth of retail insights, showing how men are beginning to shop like women, and how women have changed the way supermarkets are laid out. He also looks to the future, projecting massive retail opportunities with an aging baby-boom population and predicting how online retailing will affect shopping malls. This lighthearted look at shopping is highly recommended to anyone who buys or sells.
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Principle-Centered Leadership
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by Stephen R. Covey
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ISBN: 0671792806, Paperback- $9.75 BUY
Covey, the author of the New York Times number 1 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has struck a chord with millions of readers with his insights into human nature and values. Now he tells them how to apply his theories to everyday life, focusing primarily on the world of business.
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The Power Principle - Influence With Honor
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by Blaine Lee, Stephen R. Covey
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ISBN: 0684846160, Paperback- $9.75 BUY
This self-help book reflects Lee's views on various types of power and how to develop principle-centered power in your life, which he defines as power that inspires loyalty and devotion, transcending time and place. Such power is based on trust and respect and survives even after one dies. Lee describes three types of power: coercive, which relies on the premise of control and uses fear as its instrument; utility, which is based on fairness, the exchange of what you can do for me with what I can do for you; and principle-centered, which is based on what you can do with others. The author tells us that his purpose in writing this book is to encourage us in our work with people, and he recommends that we choose principle-centered power as the primary way to influence others in our key relationships. Such power requires us to grow, to challenge our assumptions, and often to change our whole orientation in life.
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