The 5 best books for executives: Apple or food for thought for success in management {reading tip}

Some time ago, Best of HR - Berufebilder.de® deals with a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, according to which executives are particularly resilient and therefore more successful. It seems that John C. Maxwell also suspected that such study results were correct. Because he stated: “You can only lead others if you have yourself under control”.

Deciding does not mean to do it

Maxwell gives his readers funny puzzles, make you think. Like this one: “Five frogs are sitting on a block of wood. Four decide to jump. How many stay up? Clear answer: five. Because choosing something doesn't mean doing it. ”

John C. Maxwell is one of the world's most renowned executive trainers. His most important guiding principle is “lead yourself”. And that's exactly what he guides in “The 15 Laws of Success”. Good reading for everyone who wants to systematically put himself on the road to success.

Lead yourself before you lead others

It's about 180 grade turned self-imposed leadership knowledge. And has to do with the same errors and resistances that in the Guide of employees can occur.

Such errors, with which John C. Maxwell clears up first, are: "I automatically develop myself further." Or "I don't know how to grow." Or "Now is not the right time." It is certainly not rocket science that John Maxwell addresses. But he asks the right questions.

Think about your own habits

The 15 laws described in the following do not upset the world - but they are long-term reminders to concentrate on a few essential things.

Maxwell has been in business for decades, and he is mastering his message with anecdotes, quotations, and examples so that she is also stuck.

Secret of success routine?

As in the example with the frogs. And precisely in such examples, it is also clear how one's own ability or inability affects leadership behavior. A factor often overlooked.

"If you value yourself little, don't be surprised that the world sees it no differently." Elsewhere it says: "The secret of success lies in the daily routine."

What you do has to follow

What you do has consequences. What don't do, too. It is fundamental truths like these that Maxwell systematizes and makes plausible. Whether the book “works” depends entirely on its readers.

It is not a blueprint for a successful life but a book full of questions and suggestions. Those who do not want to leave personal development to chance can only benefit from these questions - and the possible answers.

From the good employee to the first-class boss

This also applies to managers: who from employees to Executive usually has little time to get used to his new role, to get to know the demands placed on him and to meet them. How do you make the leap from the employee to? Executive despite this?

Managers also need leadership when they are promoted “overnight” from team member to department manager. Then a role change is announced, which must be visible in self-portrayal, communicative skills and a universal role model function.

Stefan Bartel will help you in his well thought-out guide “1 × 1 der Communication for executives ”with lots of clever tips for this task.

To accept a new role

At the beginning you should anchor your new function in your head and put away old ways of working and dealing with it. Otherwise you will inadvertently miss yourself the image of a “highly paid clerk” - you want it Manager don't you don't want to. And that is at the expense of the company when the “leadership vacuum” becomes noticeable for everyone.

Better: systematically approach the new challenges and obligations. A little more distance to the old ones colleagues belongs to it. And the immediate “availability when it burns.” Bartel puts it in a nutshell: “Make a conscious decision to take on a leadership role, see difficulties as opportunities.

Prioritize and delegate

So that the new challenges do not weigh overwhelmingly on your shoulders, work on your profile. you Objective: "Strengthening strengths and managing weaknesses." In daily business you show leadership responsibility by organizing your work efficiently (“better doing the right things than doing things right”) and delegating.

Above all, you should align your personal leadership style with the poles “authenticity” and “empathy”. It's not that difficult at all if you follow the tips, examples and exercises that Bartel will give you for negotiating, Team - or provide conflict discussions. Well written and very useful!

A role to grow

Congratulations on getting the suffix “Senior” on your business card. However, this does not automatically make you a role model and mastermind for your employees.

But you can grow into it! In “1 × 1 of communication for executives”, author Stefan Bartel prepares the youngest elite for the professional and human challenges of the new management function. Really good - of course also for older vintages!

Revelation novel instead of non-fiction book

There are thousands of books on “becoming successful” and “making a career”. What is not in any of these books are tips like: “Be arrogant. Don't listen to your customers. Treat your employees as if they were idiots. Act like an asshole. ” But anyone reading the Inside Apple report will find that Steve Jobs' recipe for success was just that. Should you imitate them? Your decision!

You should not talk badly about the dead. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Adam Lashinsky does not stick to it. His report on the most successful and valuable IT company in the world is more like a revelatory romance than a non-fiction book.

In “Inside Apple”, Lashinsky takes you through the mysterious Apple campus and takes you to internal strategy meetings. It is incredibly exciting and often surprising. Because Lashinsky never leaves a mouthful when he talks about lousy machinations and human abysses.

The customers were not asked

Above all, the book shakes the nimbus of the once most important manager and visionary in the IT industry: Steve Jobs. The ex-Apple boss is portrayed as a self-centered loner, “narcissistically moody, not paying attention to the feelings of others”.

At the same time, Lashinsky also describes how Jobs' authoritarian leadership style laid the foundation for the universal triumphal march of current i-products. Jobs has always followed his path consistently, without ever doubting his decisions. “It is known that Jobs decided what customers want. He didn't ask her for her opinion ”.

Who talks too much flies

Secrecy is an integral part of corporate culture at Apple. Employees often do not even know what their colleagues are doing. Lashinsky said that to talk about his own projects is taboo - even in the circle of the family.

Because whoever talks too much flies. The fear of sanctions still seems to be omnipresent at Apple and not limited to the lower items. "In fact, there is a popular saying at Apple: Everyone who is at Apple wants to get out, and everyone who is not there wants to go in."

What comes after Jobs

In his book, Lashinsky also describes in detail the post-job era with Tim Cook at the top, whom he publishes as a pedant in love with the table, "without any humor".

And he agrees with the prognosis that Apple will also publish successful products for jobs, but that it can no longer meet the huge expectations of being the innovator of the entire IT world.

Abandoned Appel?

Sounds like a farewell, but is the logical consequence of an ongoing development, which Lashinsky impressively tells.

Conclusion: "Inside Apple" is a very critical look into the most important minds and behind the scenes of the computer group. The book will polarize, not only because of the relentlessly open narrative style. If you want to understand what made Apple so successful, you have to read it.

Whoever wants to lead invests

We all spend a lot of time making our money. To waste it with the left, because we don't care about profitable forms of investment. The provocative book “100% with shares” shows that there are many options. However, as the author Alfred Maydorn shows, 100% seems to be an understatement.

Apple's products are sure to know you, but do you know what percentage of the stock has risen from 2003 to 2011? To 200% - or 500% or even 1000% - who offers more? The stock had a value of about 2003 $ at the beginning of 7, at the end of 2011 it is quoted at about 385 $, which is an increase in value of over 5.000%.

Who has the money, put it

And for Euro investors, there would have been more than 4.000%. So you could have become a millionaire or a millionaire with a stake around 25.000 EUR. It would have been easier with Amazon. The online bookstore traded 1997 with a price of 1,75 € in the summer.

In the wake of the Internet type of the turn of the millennium, the price rose to over € 100 and then suddenly plummeted again. It hit its low in 2001 at € 6,40. Since then the course has been climbing inexorably. At the end of 2011, it was trading at just under € 150, an incredible 8.500% increase in value. If you had invested in the company's shares 14 years ago, € 12.000 would have been enough to make you millions of dollars. Had ...

The DAX has risen only by 200%

That you can make a lot of money on the stock exchange is undeniable. If, yes, if you set to the right values. Because German standard values, such as those represented in the DAX, have earned a meager 1997% return since 50.

These are 3% a year and thus just the inflation rate. Since its low point in the year 2003 after the Technoblasen-Crash, the index has nevertheless increased by almost 200%. But this is only for the consolation, which have not just invested to highs and therefore still have losses of almost 25%.

Apple was a long time a Lame Duck

That information technology would become the growth market of the next few years could have been known by the end of the 1990s. But could you have known that Apple can free itself from a decade-long agony with the iPod?

Until then, the price of the stock floated with a short interim high in the year 2000 since the IPO 1980, so almost 25 years around its issue price around. And could one have known which of the many Internet booths that went public at the turn of the millennium had a future and would not end up as a worthless penny stock? That Amazon and not any other 0nline-Shop would become a global corporation?

Professionals usually do not trust themselves. This is why it is said to be self-made

Nevertheless: The book with the provocative title “100% with shares” is recommendable. Author Alfred Maydorn, an expert on growth stocks and 20 years in the business has been promoting his stock market letter a little in his loosely written, inspiring and pleasantly humble book, but also much more than that: for the courage to take risks.

With investments in young growth companies, even private (small) investors can make fantastic profits with manageable stakes and without hedge and lever hocus pocus. And he rightly pleads for acting on his own.

Because the professionals do not just know better than you or me, they have good reasons not to swim against the current. The risk is simply too high. If they tap several times, the job is at risk. Then rather lie with the mass wrong! If you want to delegate, then you prefer to bet on low-priced index funds.

Rate, rate what's that ...

We will continue to experience stock market tales like those of Apple, Amazon and Co. in the future. Maydorn is right there too. Maybe with the social media giant Facebook, which is currently planning its IPO and is already rated higher than Amazon. Or with one Companies, whose name we still don't know and which is currently developing how we can revolutionize our energy supply. Because: “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” (Victor Hugo)!

Surely speculation with stocks of young growth companies is not suitable as a basic investment for old-age provision. But whoever has the courage to risk some time and enough money, of course, will read Alfred Maydorn's book with profit. And after that, you might even get a good profit. Good luck!

Learning organizations

“The Fifth Discipline” was first published in 1990 and has long since become a classic. Peter M. Senge coined the term and the principle of the "learning organization". He sees companies not as cash cows who will sooner or later dig up the water for themselves and others, but as part of the whole.

"Our inability to understand and manage the world's increasingly complex systems is the root cause of most human problems." This basic conviction was the starting point for Peter M. Senge's design of a new management thinking. Quote: “A learning organization is a place where people continuously discover that they are creating their own reality.”

What is a discipline?

Peter M. Senge does not see companies as cash cows that sooner or later wipe out themselves and others. Rather, it gives companies the tools to develop and recognize them as part of the whole. He succinctly describes these tools as the “Five Disciplines”, with the “Fifth Discipline” being of particular importance.

A sport is understood by Senge as in sport as a set of certain processes, as a method. And these methods must be learned and practiced until they sit. They turn a static company into a learning organization. These are the five disciplines:

1. “Personal Mastery”: For Senge, the spiritual foundation of every organization. He understands it as the task of each individual to find out about things clear to become that really matter. For him it is about nothing less than "recognizing our connection with the world."
2. “Mental models”: We often confuse the map with the area. This results in confused communication that results in unwanted results. The unspoken basic assumptions are therefore brought to light in this discipline.
3. “The common vision”: So that mission statements are more than non-binding claims or advertising slogans, Senge shows ways from vision to reality and back again. He uses the “gap between vision and current reality” as a source of creative energy.
4. “Team learning”: “How can it be explained,” asks Senge, “that a team of managers with an individual IQ of over 120 has a collective IQ of 63?” It is a lack of dialogue, a serious obstacle, because functioning teams are the nucleus of successful companies.
5. “System Thinking”: The discipline that gave the book its name. In order for the first four disciplines to go beyond the status of gimmick, they have to be systematically linked with each other and with the big picture. This enables the fundamental change in perception, which advances both the individual as well as the teams and the entire organization.

More than a management book

The cosmos in which Senge unfolds the five disciplines is great. It ranges from personal development to an empathetic understanding of the world. Peter M. Senge also makes an important contribution to what is now known as “sustainable management”.

A great book that gave a paradigm shift in management. It remains to be hoped that the mastery of the five disciplines will become self-evident in all organizations as soon as possible.

Top books on the subject

Read text as PDF

Acquire this text as a PDF (only for own use without passing it on according to Terms & Conditions): Please send us one after purchase eMail with the desired title supportberufebilder.de, we will then send the PDF to you immediately. You can also purchase text series.

4,99€Buy

Book eCourse on Demand

Up to 30 lessons with 4 learning tasks each + final lesson as a PDF download. Please send us one after purchase eMail with the desired title supportberufebilder.de. Alternatively, we would be happy to put your course together for you or offer you a personal, regular one eMail-Course - all further information!

29,99€Buy

Skate eBook as desired

If our store doesn't offer you your desired topic: We will be happy to put together a book according to your wishes and deliver it in a format of your choice. Please sign us after purchase supportberufebilder.de

79,99€Buy

Corporate publishing and advice

Do you want to publish, increase your reach or address applicants as an employer? We offer specials for these and other topics Consultant packages (overview) - For example, a personal phone call (price is per hour).

299,00€Buy