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.
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
About the Author :
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.
