Leadership Wise – Why Business Books Suck, but Wise Leaders Succeed

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.

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 and Values 168 Culture Is a Sum of Our Values, Explicit and Implicit 169 Good Leaders Actively Check On and Shape Their Culture to Produce Better Decisions 171 Culture Eats Decision- Making for Breakfast 173 So How Do We Eat Culture for Breakfast? 175 Making Implicit Values Explicit 179 People: Hiring, Managing, Promoting, and Firing 183 Hire People Who've Read and Like This Book 183 Give Less Responsibility to Those Who Make Poor Decisions. Give More to Those Who Make Great Decisions 185 Scale Your Impact 188 Conclusion 189 Acknowledgments 195 About the Author 197 Index 199