Michael Bungay Stanier

What a Unicorn Knows is your company’s best guide to becoming a well-oiled, high-velocity machine for growth on its way to billion-dollar valuation. Why do some young companies become unicorns, while others don’t? What a Unicorn Knows is a playbook that offers a field-tested approach to delivering superior customer value and reaching unicorn status by removing the potential inhibitors to organizational scale and speed. 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: Strategic speedConstant experimentationAccelerated valueLean processEsprit de corps Drawn from the authors’ successful track record with a wide variety of unicorn-level companies, What a Unicorn Knows offers a necessary guide for rapid but lasting growth. As more companies than ever vie for unicorn status, your competitive edge will depend on learning from the best.

Promotions Are So Yesterday is the recipient of the 2023 Bronze Medal from the Axiom Business Book Awards in the category of Success/Motivation/Coaching and the 2023 Nautilus Book Award in the category of Business & Leadership (Self Pub/small Press). The time-honored tradition of defining career development exclusively in terms of promotions, moves, and title changes is dead. Beyond, between, and besides the climb up the positional ladder, there are many other ways that employees can—and want to—grow. However, many organizations still operate under the notion that promotions are the only option for career development, leaving employees disengaged, managers frustrated, and the business disadvantaged in its efforts to retain talent. The good news is that career development is so much more than promotions alone, and managers are in a powerful position to redefine career development and create positive results for their employees and their organizations in this area. In Promotions Are So Yesterday, Julie Winkle Giulioni offers you a new approach for developing your employees’ careers and helping them thrive in a company when promotions are not readily available. Discover an easy-to-apply framework of seven alternative dimensions of development (contribution, competence, confidence, connection, challenge, contentment, and choice) that will engage your employees—dynamic opportunities for growth that are completely within your control as a manager. Promotions Are So Yesterday is filled with practical advice, nearly 100 questions to spark reflection and productive dialogue, and actionable templates and tools that managers can use with employees. Help bring your employees and your organization to even greater achievement with a strategy that will increase your employees’ job satisfaction, performance, knowledge, and skills, and strengthen your organization’s workforce.

THINKERS50 BEST MANAGEMENT BOOKS FOR 2024 GOLD MEDAL WINNER – 2024 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOKS AWARD – LEADERSHIP CATEGORY "Work-life balance" isn't making anyone happy. In fact, our relentless attempts to achieve this goal have created workplaces full of stress, discontent, and burnout. While this workplace disillusionment has been brewing for years, the pandemic helped catalyze a cultural shift of workers redefining themselves beyond what they do for a living. Now, it's time for you to rethink your role as a leader in the nexus of work and life. In Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team That Flourishes, award-winning author Dan Pontefract contends that a thriving workplace isn't about employee engagement levels, nor is it predicated on your team members bringing their "best selves" to work. Instead, it requires you to support the people you manage so they can be their best in work and life. Just as a flower needs the right mix of sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow, your people need the right mix of work-life factors to create a fulfilling and harmonious existence. Pontefract introduces a new leadership paradigm focused on twelve key work-life factors that determine whether your team members' gardens are able to grow. Drawing upon primary global research, interviews, and personal experiences, Pontefract delivers a timely blueprint for leaders to cultivate work-life ecosystems where individuals don't just survive—they bloom.