Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty?

In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way-and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why.

Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. 

Included in Your Creative Career. 

Redesigning Leadership (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

When designer and computer scientist John Maeda was tapped to be president of the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, he had to learn how to be a leader quickly. He had to transform himself from a tenured professor--with a love of argument for argument's sake and the freedom to experiment--into the head of a hierarchical organization. The professor is free to speak his mind against "the man." The college president is "the man." Maeda has had to teach himself, through trial and error, about leadership. In Redesigning Leadership, he shares his learning process. Maeda, writing as an artist and designer, a technologist, and a professor, discusses intuition and risk-taking, "transparency," and all the things that a conversation can do that an email can't. In his transition from MIT to RISD he finds that the most effective way to pull people together is not social networking but free food. Leading a team? The best way for a leader to leverage the collective power of a team is to reveal his or her own humanity. Asked if he has stopped designing, Maeda replied (via Twitter) "I'm designing how to talk about/with/for our #RISD community." Maeda's creative nature makes him a different sort of leader--one who prizes experimentation, honest critique, and learning as you go. With Redesigning Leadership, he uses his experience to reveal a new model of leadership for the next generation of leaders.

The Unpublished David Ogilvy

"Ogilvy is the creative force of modern advertising."—The New York Times

First collected by his devoted family and colleagues as a seventy-fifth birthday present, The Unpublished David Ogilvy collects a career's worth of public and private communications—memos, letters, speeches, notes, and interviews—from the "Father of Advertising" and founder of Ogilvy & Mather.

Still fizzing with energy and freshness more than twenty-five years after it was first published, its success outside the private circle of friends and colleagues it was created for was, in the words of one of its editors, "because so often he spoke out on important matters long before the crowd caught up to him; because all of what he says, he says so well; because so little of what he says in the book had ever before appeared in print."

This is a business book unlike any other: a straightforward and incisive look at subjects such as salesmanship, management, and creativity, presented in Ogilvy's trademark crisp prose. Whether carefully prepared for a lecture or as a private joke to a friend, his writing always underlines the importance of the rule "it pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox."

David Ogilvy, CBE, (1911–1999) is often described as the "father of advertising." He founded New York agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1948, and his iconic campaigns include legendary adverts for Dove, Hathaway, Rolls Royce, and Guinness. Ogilvy's best-selling book Confessions of an Advertising Man is still one of the most popular books on advertising.

Included in Advertising.

Confessions of an Advertising Man

A new edition of the timeless business classic featured on Mad Men—as fresh and relevant now as the day it was written.

"We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness. The way up our ladder is open to everybody. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else."  —David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy was considered the "father of advertising" and a creative genius by many of the biggest global brands. First published in 1963, this seminal book revolutionized the world of advertising and became a bible for the 1960s ad generation. It also became an international bestseller, translated into 14 languages. Fizzing with Ogilvy's pioneering ideas and inspirational philosophy, it covers not only advertising, but also people management, corporate ethics, and office politics, and forms an essential blueprint for good practice in business.

Included in Advertising.