As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our December Reading List, we recommend these three books: BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier, Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise by Horst Schulze, and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. These books provide perspectives about business excellence from extraordinarily successful thought leaders and entrepreneurs.
BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company - Jim Collins & Bill Lazier
What's the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come?
Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship.
Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community, influencing the young pioneers who were, at that time, creating the technology revolution that was birthing in Silicon Valley. Decades later, successive generations of entrepreneurs still turn to the strategies outlined in Beyond Entrepreneurship to answer the most pressing business questions.
BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective.
The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. BE 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim's millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.
Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise - Horst Schulze
CEOs. Leaders without titles. Startups. Corporations. For-profits. Nonprofits. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do - you want to become the best. You want to win, every time.
Horst Schulze knows how to win. In Excellence Wins, Schulze, in his absolute no-nonsense approach, shares the visionary and disruptive principles that have produced immense global successes over the course of his still-prolific fifty-year career.
As the co-founder and former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Schulze fearlessly led the company to unprecedented multi-billion dollar growth, setting the business vision and people-focused standards that made the Ritz-Carlton brand globally elite.
Schulze's principles are both versatile and utterly practical to leaders of every age, career stage, and industry. You don't need a powerful title or a line of direct reports - you have everything you need to use them right now. If you're searching for the blueprint to beating the competition and out-performing everyone around you, look no further than Excellence Wins. Schulze pulls no punches as a masterful guide to becoming the very best in a world of routine compromise. Unleash the disruptive power of your true potential, own your career trajectory, and experience the game-changing proof firsthand: Excellence Wins.
The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek
From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world.
How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind.
The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in?
In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning.
Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.