The Goal

Bill, an IT manager at Parts Unlimited, has been tasked with taking on a project critical to the future of the business, code named Phoenix Project. But the project is massively over budget and behind schedule. The CEO demands Bill must fix the mess in 90 days, or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced. With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of the Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined.

More than ever, the effective management of technology is critical for business competitiveness. For decades, technology leaders have struggled to balance agility, reliability, and security. The consequences of failure have never been greater - whether it's the healthcare.gov debacle, cardholder data breaches, or missing the boat with Big Data in the cloud. And yet, high performers using DevOps principles, such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix, are routinely and reliably deploying code into production hundreds, or even thousands, of times per day.

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their successes over and over? People like Martin Luther King, Jr.; Steve Jobs; and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. Their natural ability to start with why enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.

Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few. In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. A few of these endeavors have been very successful.

Using the unique business-novel format, It's Not Luck continues the story of The Goal protagonist Alex Rogo as he navigates a new set of challenges facing the now over-diversified and under-profitable UniCo, where he has risen to the rank of division manager.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.

When it comes to delivering a pitch, Oren Klaff has unparalleled credentials. Over the past 13 years, he has used his one-of-a-kind method to raise more than $400 million - and now, for the first time, he describes his formula to help you deliver a winning pitch in any business situation. Whether you’re selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas. According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art - it’s a simple science.

You can go after the job you want...and get it! You can take the job you have...and improve it! You can take any situation you're in...and make it work for you!

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hook Model," a four steps process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. Hooked is a guide to building products people can't put down.

Gene Kim and John Willis present this nine-part series that includes an oral history of the DevOps movement, as well as discussion around pivotal figures and philosophies that DevOps draws upon, from Goldratt to Deming; from Lean to Safety Culture to Learning Organizations.The audiobook is a great way for listeners to take an even deeper dive into topics relevant to DevOps and leading technology organizations.

In keeping with the parable style, Patrick Lencioni begins by telling the fable of a woman who, as CEO of a struggling Silicon Valley firm, took control of a dysfunctional executive committee and helped its members succeed as a team. Story time over, Lencioni offers explicit instructions for overcoming the human behavioral tendencies that he says corrupt teams. Succinct yet sympathetic, this guide will be a boon for those struggling with the inherent difficulties of leading a group.

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point: really hard, and not much fun at all. And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you're in a Dip: a temporary setback that you will overcome if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

A young, untested team of problem solvers challenged with saving their company moves from board room to classroom in search of answers - and finds them through lively, open discourse with their innovative professor. This gripping, fast-paced business novel does for project management what Eliyahu M. Goldratt's other novels have done for production and marketing.

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2011) is a book about human motivations. Many of the prevailing ideas about why humans make decisions and operate the way they do aren't true or, at least, they are incomplete. Businesses, schools, and organizations are stuck in outdated, unexamined beliefs about human motivation. These beliefs are rooted in the idea of extrinsic motivation - that people make decisions based on external rewards and punishments.