Thoughtfully Ruthless The Key to Exponential Growth

by Wright, Val

• ISBN13: 9781119222576
• ISBN10: 1119222575
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-04-25
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Unlock explosive growth potential with the true model of modern leadership

Thoughtfully Ruthless lays out the secret to rapid business growth by showing you how to magically invent more time, catapult your energy, and boost the productivity of your resources. Author Val Wright has worked with leaders of all stripes—from doctors to musicians to Fortune 50 C-suite executives—to help them unlock their potential and achieve the next level of success. Her experiences have shown time and time again that it's not the economy, or the market conditions, or the competition that's holding your business back.

The secret to exponential growth lies within how leaders ruthlessly manage their time, energy, and resources in parallel. Everyone is on a virtual center stage with the whole world watching and reporting every move, leaders need to know how to be ruthless in a thoughtful way. This book shows you how to become that kind of leader, and how to adopt the habits, skills, and practices of some of the most successful business leaders of our time. You'll learn how to become sensibly selfish, how to spend your time and energy, and what issues to delegate or ignore so you can clear your slate to focus on what really matters to you.

In a world where rapid growth is the new norm, we have input overload. Leadership is much-lauded but commonly under-practiced in business today. This book is designed to help you shape your leadership to drive business growth, get you promoted faster, and create a life that you love.

• Recover your time and energy away from black holes
• Focus on the factors that really impact your business
• Identify and build the all-star team you need tomorrow—today
• Create magnetic support and followership
• Learn the secret to pulling ahead of the competition

With all the boardroom handwringing about products, the new consumer, and financial results, it's easy to get sucked into issues that ultimately have only a granular effect on real growth. Thoughtfully Ruthless leadership differentiates remarkable leaders and companies. This book provides a model for growth-oriented leadership, and lays out the essential practices you should start today.

Author Biography

VAL WRIGHT works with Fortune 500 executives to accelerate growth and innovation, and creates compassionate truth telling, fearlessness, and extensive creative, technical, and leadership gains. Her clients include household names such as Starbucks, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Financial Times, and DreamWorks Animation. She's an inductee into the Million Dollar Consultant^® Hall of Fame and she is a regular contributor on CNBC, Inc., Bloomberg, Reuters, MSN and Today.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Part I Why You Need to Be Thoughtfully Ruthless 1

Chapter 1 Thoughtful and Ruthless 3

The Trigger Points for Thoughtfully Ruthless 3

Who Is Thoughtful? Who Is Ruthless? 5

Can You Name One? 6

Your Time, Energy, and Resources 7

How Thoughtfully Ruthless Are You? 15

Chapter 2 The Cost of Doing Nothing 19

The Cost of Delay 20

The Downward Spiral of Gloom 21

The Thoughtfully Ruthless Success Loop 25

Chapter 3 Your Selfish Charter 29

Your Sensibly Selfish Charter 32

Wishful Thinking Works 35

Chapter 4 Become Brilliant at Demonstrating Your Brilliance 39

Assessing Your Brilliance and How Brilliantly You Demonstrate It 40

Why Appearance Trumps Reality Every Time 42

How to Transform from Being Humble to Shameless 48

Your Action 50

Part II Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Time 53

Chapter 5 The Power of No 55

The Powerful Post-It 56

The Immediacy Effect 57

How to Be Productively Unproductive 60

How to Control Input Overload 61

Your Lost Discipline List 63

Thirty Ways to Say No 64

Chapter 6 SHUSH!: How to Create Silence, Space, and Time 67

Your Daily Silence 67

The Gift of Time 70

In-box in Control 73

Calendar Chaos 77

Meaningful Meetings 79

The Thoughtfully Ruthless Deadline Tracker 84

Part III Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Energy 89

Chapter 7 Becoming Imperturbable 91

How to Stop the Worry Trifecta 91

Rapid Thought to Action 95

How Imperturbable Are You? 96

Managing the Energy Leaks 98

Your Accelerators and Decelerators 100

Accelerating by Improving Your Sleep, Nutrition, and Exercise 100

Chapter 8 Divorce Your Friends and Network 109

The Greenhouse Effect 110

Put Your Social Life on Autopilot 113

An Enviable Inner Circle of Advisors 115

Internal and External Connections 116

Communities 116

Perfecting Your Team’s Connections 117

Surrounding Yourself with Believers 117

Chapter 9 Creating a Leapfrog Organization 119

Your Five-Year Leap 119

The Intentional Annoyance Phase 124

Building an Exemplary Board 127

Leaving Your Legacy 132

Chapter 10 The Thoughtfully Ruthless Team 135

Steps for Galvanizing Your Team 138

The Characteristics of a Galvanized Team 142

Do You Tolerate Mediocrity? 149

Chapter 11 Amazon versus Microsoft 155

Assessing Your Culture 160

Can You Take the Heat? 167

Reward the Results You Want 169

Unleashing Innovation 170

Using the Cultural Continuum 171

The Express Lane to Culture Change 172

Chapter 12 Mind the Gap 173

Evaporating Excuses 173

Prepare for Abrupt U-turns 175

Change Your View, Change Your Habits 176

Listen to Who You Listen to 177

Evidence, Patterns, and Observed Behavior 177

Practice Altitude Adjustment 179

Make Unpopular and High-Risk Decisions 179

Appendix 185

Ninety-Nine Ways to Be Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Time 185

Ninety-Nine Ways to Be Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Energy 190

Ninety-Nine Ways to Be Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Resources 194

About the Author 201

Index 203