Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Why do some young companies become unicorns ( a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion) , while others don’t?    The book, What a Unicorn Knows , offers a field-tested approach to delivering superior customer value and reaching unicorn status by removing the potential inhibitors to organizational scale and speed.    Those inhibitors include these four primary forces:   Drag Inertia Friction Waste Drawing on a mastery of lean-based methods for achieving maximum effect with minimum means, private equity operators Matthew E. May and Pablo Dominguez provide readers with a powerful framework of universally applicable principles that enable any company to effectively accelerate its ability to scale and grow. Called The Unicorn Model™ and built on five foundational principles , the authors deliver a compelling narrative of stories and experiences in an easy-to-remember mnemonic:   S trategic speed C onstant experimentation A ccelerated value L ean proc

Branding, marketing and leadership expert, Debbie Laskey , is publishing a fascinating series on her blog, which will continue through the rest of 2023. The series is titled, " Fall Back to Reading Series ," and it features input from dozens of leadership and marketing experts, mostly who have previously appeared on her blog. These contributors answer the following five questions for Debbie and the answers are both informational and interesting: Which three business books have made the biggest impact on your career? Who is your favorite author, and why? What book did you read in high school or college that, to this day, you still remember vividly, and why? Do you intersperse fiction with your business reading? If yes, what was the last work of fiction that you read, and what caught your attention about it? If you created a nonprofit organization to promote reading to children and young adults, what would you name it, and why? "Since reading has been one of my favorite ho

  Gallup, Inc. is a private, employee-owned analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup as the American Institute of Public Opinion in 1935, the organization delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Gallup is the go-to resource for learning about the attitudes and behaviors of employees and customers .   And as revealed in Gallup’s latest book, Culture Shock , authored by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter , the following are some eye-opening statistics today’s business leaders need to know.   Among workers in the U.S., there is a dead-even tie between work-life splitters (who prefer strict hours) and work-life blenders (who might get work done on an evening or weekend). Both can be highly engaged and productive, but leaders must identify which is which to prevent burnout.   90% of U.S. employees with desk and office jobs aren’t longing for the old workplace to return, and nearly 40% of e

“Only you , as a senior leader, have the power to direct your company to continuous and sustainable success,” says Scott K. Edinger , author of the new book, The Growth Leader . “Growth is a leadership issue, not a sales issue,” he adds. His book explains why that is true. And why the relationship that executives and leaders have with the sales organization is among the most important elements of growth leadership. The Growth Leader  reveals how top executives create profitable growth through the intersection of strategy, leadership, and sales. With a clear strategy, inspiring leadership, and aligned sales, powerful leaders understand that true competitive advantage doesn't come from innovation alone but belongs to companies that use their sales organization to add and create value. By reading the book, you'll learn how to ensure growth strategy is aligned at every level of your company, from boardroom initiatives to daily customer interaction.  More specifically, you’l

“When employees struggle to process difficult news, they look to their leaders to respond in some way— both from the top of their organizations as well as from their own manager. It can be difficult to find the exact right words, but saying nothing communicates something as well—and can be seen as insensitive,” explains communications expert David Grossman .   “Leaders and managers have to demonstrate that they care about the emotional well-being of all those impacted by the crisis,” he adds.  Fortunately, Grossman released today a free Quick Guide for leaders called,  10 Steps to Help Employees Process Difficult Situations .   The 10-step quick guide for leaders offers insights from Grossman’s philosophy on leading effectively by demonstrating empathy, humanity, and authenticity, what he calls, “Heart First" Leadership.   Communication on the various crises we face in the world today is about the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment where employees are l

  Today brings the new book by Ron Shaich , founder, and former CEO of Panera Bread. It’s called, Know What Matters: Lessons From A Lifetime Of Transformations .  Shaich offers clear-headed lessons for the entire life cycle of an enterprise, from bootstrapping a startup to going public to managing large companies to selling a business. He challenges readers to grapple with how business impacts life, sharing his own struggles and setbacks with as much honesty and candor as he describes his successes.  The primary four transformations Shaich led were:  Evolving Au Bon Pain (his predecessor company) from a simple French bakery to a chain of bakery cafes – a platform shift that set the stage for new opportunities in the space between fast food and fine dining.  Discovering, through careful observation of customer behavior, a whole new paradigm within the restaurant category that became the $100 billion-plus fast-casual segment.  Recognizing the potential of Panera Bread to become a

In  Paul Falcone ’s book,  75 Ways For Managers To Hire, Develop And Keep Great Employees , he recommends asking new employees the following questions 30, 60 and 90 days after they were hired:   30-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Why do you think we selected you as an employee? What do you like about the job and the organization so far? What’s been going well? What are the highlights of your experiences so far? Why? Tell me what you don’t understand about your job and about our organization now that you’ve had a month to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Have you faced any unforeseen surprises since joining us that you weren’t expecting?   60-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Do you have enough, too much or too little time to do your work? Do you have access to the appropriate tools and resources? Do you feel you have been sufficiently trained in all aspects of your job to perform at a high level? How do you see your job relating to the organization’s mission and visio

“Great leaders are great students, and the world is their classroom,” says   Damon Lembi , author of the new book   The Learn-It-all Leader .  “Learn-It-All leaders are constantly creating and re-creating themselves, their companies, and their leadership. They are information extractors. They pull what they learn about everything—be it product innovation or how to inspire a team—from their lived experience,” adds Lembi.  These types of leaders also model and directly encourage a culture of learning inside their organizations. This attracts higher-quality workers, improves their performance over time and holds onto them longer.  The book is divided into two parts: Part 1:  Being  –  explores how Learn-It-All leaders think . Part 2:  Doing  –  examines what Learn-It-All leaders do differently .  Damon Lembi Some of my favorite takeaways (including some quotes) from the book include:  Quote : “Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi  Qu

What I like most about Miguel Leal ’s memoir, aside from its overall compelling and inspiring information, are the business and life lessons he shares.  Those lessons are found throughout his recently released memoir, The House That Cheese Built . The book is a quintessential American dream story from a Mexican entrepreneur who shares the tale of building a multi-million-dollar business from scratch, complete with both success and failure, and always a vision of hope.  Leal came to the U.S. penniless as a teenager, speaking almost no English; he literally slept in the boiler room of a Wisconsin cheese factory for months before he was caught. Through hard work, grit, and ingenuity Leal would go on to launch his own business. He is widely credited with introducing Mexican cheeses to the U.S. market and grew his company to a multimillion-dollar success story that defined an industry. Yet, like many successful entrepreneurs, Leal’s great successes were matched by a variety of gripping

  Michelle P. King’s new book, How Work Works , is composed of ten years of her research examining corporate culture, which includes a review of more than three thousand academic journal articles, seventy-two original interviews with executives from two different organizations (in England and Australia), two surveys with over three thousand participants and much more.  In other words, King knows what it takes to advance at work, and more importantly, how we derive fulfillment from what we do and contribute beyond a job description.  How Work Works is a unique and revelatory guide to understanding and navigating the unwritten rules of the workplace—the key to achieving success, finding meaning, and staying true to your authentic self in today’s business world.  Through all King’s research she discovered to get ahead in the business world, the most successful individuals do not rely on the often generic and outdated written formal rules that for a century have defined the workpla

  Are you stuck in chronic performance? You are if you: Are always racing to check tasks off a list. Spending most of your time trying to minimize mistakes. Suppressing your uncertainties, impressions, or questions to try to appear like you always know what you’re doing.   Being stuck in chronic performance can have a devastating impact on your skills, confidence, job, and personal life.   Fortunately, reading Eduardo Briceño ’s bold and highly applicable book, The Performance Paradox , will help you break free of chronic performance. Because getting trapped in the Performance Paradox where you only focus only on performing, your performance will suffer.   “The Performance Paradox is the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we want to improve our performance, we have to do something other than just perform,” explains Briceño. “No matter how hard we work, if we only do things as best we know how, trying to minimize mistakes, we get stuck at our current levels of understanding