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Innovation, Abundance, Customer Service, Leadership & More [CEO Bookshelf]

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You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our CEO Bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken gems or nuggets from our library and provide them for CEOs, startups, entrepreneurs and business owners. Get your copy of these books and more at CEO Books.

Alignment – CEO Nuggets – 3 Nuggets

  1. Aligning things means that there is only One Version…. Aligning things also means that those things deliver One Message. In other words, your vision statements, mission statements, strategies, policies, goals, products, metrics, systems, etc. must be in alignment with each other. Aligning people means you must align them with your things, and you must align them with each other. (Drive One Direction)
  2. Alignment is a complex, multidimensional problem. Therefore, aligning your company requires an integrated multidisciplinary approach. The Drive One Direction methodology includes twelve components (one team, one thing, one vision, one mission, one code, one brand, one strategy, one portfolio, one way, one wow!, one plan, and everyone). (Drive One Direction)
  3. Alignment is mission-critical. (Drive One Direction)

Leadership – CEO Nuggets – 5 Nuggets

  1. …the four universal principles of life that drive our behavior. They are (1) Courageous humility – focusing on personal growth (2) Growth-driven love – focusing on growing others (3) Ego-driven PRIDE – focusing on self-promoting (4) Self-limiting FEAR–focusing on self-protection. (Above the Line)
  2. Developing a refined filter takes time–and yet more patience–and requires us to put one foot in front of the other and trust the process (TTP!). Even though we will face setbacks, mistakes, disappointments, and the realities of life, we will find more of our best selves, our true north, the incredible people we can be by trusting the process, trusting ourselves, and trusting our potential. (Above the Line)
  3. Through thirty years of studying, coaching, practicing, and researching, we have found one truth to be consistent. The above the line and below the line behaviors are based on four universal principles of life: humility, love, pride, and fear. (Above the Line)
  4. Character development is just like going to the gym. The key is consistency and coaching. Physical strength isn't built in a day, and neither is character. (Above the Line)
  5. The great leaders we have watched build great cultures and organizations have been aware that the language of business is money: no money, no business…. They are deeply aware of what underpins sustainable results. They understand its culture. (Above the Line)

Abundance – CEO Nuggets – 6 Nuggets

  1. What I've discovered about abundance is that it's a mindset more than it's your actual circumstances. And this mindset doesn't require lots of money. (Abundance Now)
  2. Hope is not a strategy. A truly great life comes from having a plan. (Abundance Now)
  3. Be aware that owning a business is not the only route to wealth–or even the best route. Multiple streams of income are. And you don't have to own a business to have numerous, stable sources of income. (Abundance Now)
  4. Balance is a myth. Harmony is a must. (Abundance Now)
  5. What is the most immediate thing you can do to start living abundantly, building your future, and establishing your legacy? Take action. Decide what you want, create a plan to pursue it, then move forward–regardless of your fear, your lack of experience or knowledge, your lack of resources, or any other impediment. (Abundance Now)
  6. Abundance is not a myth, nor is it mystical. There isn't some undisclosed, 007-style secret code to success that is keeping you from world-class achievement. Too many people have bought into the notion that achieving prosperity is difficult, time-consuming or limited to special people. (Abundance Now)

Decisions – CEO Nuggets – 7 Nuggets

  1. When you make the decision, make it. Don't be half-hearted. Stick with it. Dedicate all the resources needed to make it a success. Don't second-guess. (Decisions) 
  2. Be aware of how your decisions will affect others, either directly or by the example they set. (Decisions)
  3. When facing a decision, play out all sides. Imagine (in detail and with sincerity) going in one direction with your decision and see how that feels. Then the other. And a third or fourth if they exist. You will discover that one probably feels more “right” than the others. (Decisions)
  4. You don't have to be a corporate CEO to benefit from Ford's example. He carefully studied the problems inherent in the automobile-manufacturing process as well as the ramifications of various ways to address the problems. Then, he made decisions and quickly implemented them. (Decisions)
  5. Think quality and top-of-the-line, alway, as the desired result of your decisions. (Decisions)
  6. Educate yourself as deeply as you can. Good decisions are rooted in knowledge and reality. (Decisions)
  7. Give constant attention to developing your conscience, your core values, your principles. These are what will give you true guidance. (Decisions)
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Customer Service – CEO Nuggets – 4 Nuggets

  1. …five steps to take toward establishing and sustaining a customer service culture: (1) Define your purpose in a sentence or two. (2) Set down a shortlist of principles that are fundamental to your desired culture. (3) Loudly express your cultural expectations. (4) Maintain a repeating ritual for cultural reinforcement. (5) Develop an obsession with talent management. (Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away))
  2. A wow experience is when service goes beyond fulfilling basic customer expectations and does so in a creative, unexpected way. By creating a wow experience, you give rise to a story in the mind of your customer. (Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away))
  3. My goal in bringing up these issues is something different: to get you to stop thinking so linearly about the customer experience–stop pretending that 1+1 invariably equals 2 in the mind of the customer. The equations involved are must more complicated and fluid than that. What creates a pleasing result for one customer on one day may be a mismatch for another customer on another day, or even for the same customer later on the same day. (Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away))
  4. The secret, in other words, is to never stop believing in the importance of the individual customer and the importance of every individual interaction, no matter how many customers your organization has grown to serve. Don't fall into the trap of thinking there's an infinite supply of new customers out there for the taking if only your marketing and sales departments would do their jobs, seeking out and converting more leads. Tell yourself instead that not only are customers a limited commodity, there's no such thing as a ‘customers' in the plural. Rather, there's just one customer: the one who's being served right now. (Ignore Your Customers (and They'll Go Away))

Innovation – CEO Nuggets – 6 Nuggets

  1. There is no substitute for a profitable, scalable business model. Before entrepreneurs can worry about leadership, team building, technology deployment, or customer growth, they need to get the business model right and reassess it continually. A blockbuster innovation matched with a flawed business model results in frustration and failure; entrepreneurial grit powering a defective business model can drive a company into the ground. (Innovation on Tap)
  2. The one quality that successful entrepreneurs in America have shared over three centuries is the ability to access, nurture and leverage community. No entrepreneur has all the tools necessary for success. (Innovation on Tap)
  3. There seems to have come a moment when capitalism and social progress aligned, when being competitive could also mean being virtuous, and when “doing well” and “doing good” met. Branch Rickey's gift was in sensing that moment and action on it, and Jackie Robinson's was having the courage and resilience to respond to the call. The result was a Brookly Dodgers team better able to compete for the pennant and more likely to make its ownership wealthy, and the American national pastime finally and irrevocably open to people of color. (Innovation on Tap)
  4. America is a nation of entrepreneurs because it is filled with talented individuals who excel at innovating along the major themes [mechanization, mass production, consumerism, sustainability, digitization, and social and cultural entrepreneurship], as well as those who excel at innovating around the major themes. (Innovation on Tap)
  5. Buddy Bolden also serves as a poignant reminder that even marginalized entrepreneurs can flourish when community thrives and where race and class are second to innovation and talent. (Innovation on Tap)
  6. One of the greatest entrepreneurial ambiguities is that innovation–the really new stuff–honors, borrows from, and sometimes sits squarely in the midst of tradition–the really old stuff. (Innovation on Tap)
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Books on The CEO Bookshelf

Descriptions are from Amazon.com. Check out this edition at CEO Books.

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