Books by Sydney Finkelstein

Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes

by Sydney Finkelstein

Identifies companies that made critical business mistakes that resulted in their downfalls soon after receiving recognition as successful empires, inviting corporate leaders to learn from the examples of others in order to avoid common vulnerabilities. 60,000 first printing.

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Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes

by Sydney Finkelstein

Bob Pittman and AOL Time Warner. Jean Marie Messier and Vivendi. Jill Barad and Mattel. Dennis Kozlowski and Tyco. It's an all too common scenario. A great company breaks from the pack; the analysts are in love; the smiling CEO appears on the cover of Fortune.

Two years later, the company is in flames, the pension plan is bleeding, the stock is worthless. What goes wrong in these cases? Usually it seems that top management made some incredibly stupid mistakes. But the people responsible are almost always remarkably intelligent and usually have terrific track records. Just as puzzling as the fact that brilliant managers can make bad mistakes is the way they so often magnify the damage. Once a company has made a serious mis-step, it often seems as though it can't do anything right. How does this happen? Instead of rectifying their mistakes, why do business leaders regularly make them worse?

To answer these questions, Sydney Finkelstein has carried out the largest research project ever devoted to corporate mistakes and failures. In WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL, he and his research team uncover-with startling clarity and unassailable documentation-the causes regularly responsible for major business breakdowns. He relates the stories of great business disasters and demonstrates that there are specific, identifiable ways in which many businesses regularly make themselves vulnerable to failure. The result is a truly indispensable, practical, must-read book that explains the mechanics of business failure, how to avoid them, and what to do if they happen.

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Harvard Business Review Everyday Emotional Intelligence: Big Ideas and Practical Advice on How to Be Human at Work

by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, Annie McKee, Harvard Business Review, Sydney Finkelstein

Fundamental frameworks for emotional intelligence and how to apply them every day.
According to research by Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence has proved to be twice as important as other competencies in determining outstanding leadership. It is now one of the crucial criteria in hiring and promotion processes, performance evaluations, and professional development courses. And it's not innate--it's a skill that all of us can improve.
With this double volume you'll get HBR's 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence and the HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence. That's 10 definitive HBR articles on emotional intelligence by Goleman and other leaders in the field, curated by our editors--paired with smart, focused advice from HBR experts about how to implement those ideas in your daily work life.
With Everyday Emotional Intelligence, you'll learn how to: Recognize your own EQ strengths and weaknesses Regulate your emotions in tough situations Manage difficult people Build the social awareness of your team Motivate yourself through ups and downs Write forceful emails people won't misinterpret Make better, less emotionally biased decisions Help an employee develop emotional intelligence Handle specific situations like crying at work and tense communications across different cultures

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HBR's 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence (with featured article "What Makes a Leader?" by Daniel Goleman)(HBR's 10 Must Reads)

by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, Annie McKee, Harvard Business Review, Sydney Finkelstein

In his defining work on emotional intelligence, bestselling author Daniel Goleman found that it is twice as important as other competencies in determining outstanding leadership.
If you read nothing else on emotional intelligence, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you boost your emotional skills―and your professional success.
This book will inspire you to: Monitor and channel your moods and emotions Make smart, empathetic people decisions Manage conflict and regulate emotions within your team React to tough situations with resilience Better understand your strengths, weaknesses, needs, values, and goals Develop emotional agility
This collection of articles includes: “What Makes a Leader” by Daniel Goleman, “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance” by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, “Why It’s So Hard to Be Fair” by Joel Brockner, “Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions” by Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead, and Sydney Finkelstein, “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups” by Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steve B. Wolff, “The Price of Incivility: Lack of Respect Hurts Morale―and the Bottom Line” by Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, “How Resilience Works” by Diane Coutu, “Emotional Agility: How Effective Leaders Manage Their Negative Thoughts and Feelings” by Susan David and Christina Congleton, “Fear of Feedback” by Jay M. Jackman and Myra H. Strober, and “The Young and the Clueless” by Kerry A. Bunker, Kathy E. Kram, and Sharon Ting.

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Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

by Sydney Finkelstein

"Superbosses is the rare business book that is chock full of new, useful, and often unexpected ideas. After you read Finkelstein's well-crafted gem, you will never go about leading, evaluating, and developing talent in quite the same way.”—Robert Sutton, author of Scaling Up Excellence and The No Asshole Rule

“Maybe you’re a decent boss. But are you a superboss? That’s the question you’ll be asking yourself after reading Sydney Finkelstein’s fascinating book. By revealing the secrets of superbosses from finance to fashion and from cooking to comic books, Finkelstein offers a smart, actionable playbook for anyone trying to become a better leader.”—Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and Drive

A fascinating exploration of the world’s most effective bosses—and how they motivate, inspire, and enable others to advance their companies and shape entire industries, by the author of How Smart Executives Fail. A must-read for anyone interested in leadership and building an enduring pipeline of talent.

What do football coach Bill Walsh, restauranteur Alice Waters, television executive Lorne Michaels, technology CEO Larry Ellison, and fashion pioneer Ralph Lauren have in common? On the surface, not much, other than consistent success in their fields. But below the surface, they share a common approach to finding, nurturing, leading, and even letting go of great people. The way they deal with talent makes them not merely success stories, not merely organization builders, but what Sydney Finkelstein calls superbosses.

After ten years of research and more than two hundred interviews, Finkelstein—an acclaimed professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, speaker, and executive coach and consultant—discovered that superbosses exist in nearly every industry. If you study the top fifty leaders in any field, as many as one-third will have once worked for a superboss.

While superbosses differ in their personal styles, they all focus on identifying promising newcomers, inspiring their best work, and launching them into highly successful careers—while also expanding their own networks and building stronger companies. Among the practices that distinguish superbosses:

They Create Master-Apprentice Relationships.
Superbosses customize their coaching to what each protégé really needs, and also are constant founts of practical wisdom. Advertising legend Jay Chiat not only worked closely with each of his employees but would sometimes extend their discussions into the night.

They Rely on the Cohort Effect.
Superbosses strongly encourage collegiality even as they simultaneously drive internal competition. At Lorne Michaels’s Saturday Night Live, writers and performers are judged by how much of their material actually gets on the air, but they can’t get anything on the air without the support of their coworkers.

They Say Good-Bye on Good Terms.
Nobody likes it when great employees quit, but superbosses don’t respond with anger or resentment. They know that former direct reports can become highly valuable members of their network, especially as they rise to major new roles elsewhere. Julian Robertson, the billionaire hedge fund manager, continued to work with and invest in his former employees who started their own funds.

By sharing the fascinating stories of superbosses and their protégés, Finkelstein explores a phenomenon that never had a name before. And he shows how each of us can emulate the best tactics of superbosses to create our own powerful networks of extraordinary talent.

Copies

No copies available.

Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

by Sydney Finkelstein

"Superbosses is the rare business book that is chock full of new, useful, and often unexpected ideas. After you read Finkelstein's well-crafted gem, you will never go about leading, evaluating, and developing talent in quite the same way.”—Robert Sutton, author of Scaling Up Excellence and The No Asshole Rule

“Maybe you’re a decent boss. But are you a superboss? That’s the question you’ll be asking yourself after reading Sydney Finkelstein’s fascinating book. By revealing the secrets of superbosses from finance to fashion and from cooking to comic books, Finkelstein offers a smart, actionable playbook for anyone trying to become a better leader.”—Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and Drive

A fascinating exploration of the world’s most effective bosses—and how they motivate, inspire, and enable others to advance their companies and shape entire industries, by the author of How Smart Executives Fail. A must-read for anyone interested in leadership and building an enduring pipeline of talent.

What do football coach Bill Walsh, restauranteur Alice Waters, television executive Lorne Michaels, technology CEO Larry Ellison, and fashion pioneer Ralph Lauren have in common? On the surface, not much, other than consistent success in their fields. But below the surface, they share a common approach to finding, nurturing, leading, and even letting go of great people. The way they deal with talent makes them not merely success stories, not merely organization builders, but what Sydney Finkelstein calls superbosses.

After ten years of research and more than two hundred interviews, Finkelstein—an acclaimed professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, speaker, and executive coach and consultant—discovered that superbosses exist in nearly every industry. If you study the top fifty leaders in any field, as many as one-third will have once worked for a superboss.

While superbosses differ in their personal styles, they all focus on identifying promising newcomers, inspiring their best work, and launching them into highly successful careers—while also expanding their own networks and building stronger companies. Among the practices that distinguish superbosses:

They Create Master-Apprentice Relationships.
Superbosses customize their coaching to what each protégé really needs, and also are constant founts of practical wisdom. Advertising legend Jay Chiat not only worked closely with each of his employees but would sometimes extend their discussions into the night.

They Rely on the Cohort Effect.
Superbosses strongly encourage collegiality even as they simultaneously drive internal competition. At Lorne Michaels’s Saturday Night Live, writers and performers are judged by how much of their material actually gets on the air, but they can’t get anything on the air without the support of their coworkers.

They Say Good-Bye on Good Terms.
Nobody likes it when great employees quit, but superbosses don’t respond with anger or resentment. They know that former direct reports can become highly valuable members of their network, especially as they rise to major new roles elsewhere. Julian Robertson, the billionaire hedge fund manager, continued to work with and invest in his former employees who started their own funds.

By sharing the fascinating stories of superbosses and their protégés, Finkelstein explores a phenomenon that never had a name before. And he shows how each of us can emulate the best tactics of superbosses to create our own powerful networks of extraordinary talent.

Copies

No copies available.