Thoughtfully Ruthless

Book description

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

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Foreword
  6. Preface
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Part I: Why You Need to be Thoughtfully Ruthless
    1. Chapter 1: Thoughtful and Ruthless
      1. The Trigger Points for Thoughtfully Ruthless
      2. Who Is Thoughtful? Who Is Ruthless?
      3. Can You Name One?
      4. Your Time, Energy, and Resources
      5. How Thoughtfully Ruthless Are You?
    2. Chapter 2: The Cost of Doing Nothing
      1. The Cost of Delay
      2. The Downward Spiral of Gloom
      3. The Thoughtfully Ruthless Success Loop
    3. Chapter 3: Your Selfish Charter
      1. Your Sensibly Selfish Charter
      2. Wishful Thinking Works
      3. Notes
    4. Chapter 4: Become Brilliant at Demonstrating Your Brilliance
      1. Assessing Your Brilliance and How Brilliantly You Demonstrate It
      2. Why Appearance Trumps Reality Every Time
      3. How to Transform from Being Humble to Shameless
      4. Your Action
  9. Part II: Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Time
    1. Chapter 5: The Power of No
      1. The Powerful Post-It
      2. The Immediacy Effect
      3. How to be Productively Unproductive
      4. How to Control Input Overload
      5. Your Lost Discipline List
      6. Thirty Ways to Say No
    2. Chapter 6: Shush!
      1. Your Daily Silence
      2. The Gift of Time
      3. In-Box in Control
      4. Calendar Chaos
      5. Meaningful Meetings
      6. The Thoughtfully Ruthless Deadline Tracker
  10. Part III: Thoughtfully Ruthless with Your Energy
    1. Chapter 7: Becoming Imperturbable
      1. How to Stop the Worry Trifecta
      2. Rapid Thought to Action
      3. How Imperturbable are You?
      4. Managing the Energy Leaks
      5. Your Accelerators and Decelerators
      6. Accelerating by Improving Your Sleep, Nutrition, and Exercise
    2. Chapter 8: Divorce Your Friends and Network
      1. The Greenhouse Effect
      2. Put Your Social Life on Autopilot
      3. An Enviable Inner Circle of Advisors
      4. Internal and External Connections
      5. Communities
      6. Perfecting Your Team's Connections
      7. Surrounding Yourself With Believers
    3. Chapter 9: Creating a Leapfrog Organization
      1. Your Five-Year Leap
      2. The Intentional Annoyance Phase
      3. Building an Exemplary Board
      4. Leaving Your Legacy
    4. Chapter 10: The Thoughtfully Ruthless Team
      1. Steps for Galvanizing Your Team
      2. The Characteristics of a Galvanized Team
      3. Do You Tolerate Mediocrity?
    5. Chapter 11: Amazon Versus Microsoft
      1. Assessing Your Culture
      2. Can You Take the Heat?
      3. Reward the Results You Want
      4. Unleashing Innovation
      5. Using the Cultural Continuum
      6. The Express Lane to Culture Change
    6. Chapter 12: Mind the Gap
      1. Evaporating Excuses
      2. Prepare for Abrupt U-Turns
      3. Change Your View, Change Your Habits
      4. Listen to Who You Listen to
      5. Evidence, Patterns, and Observed Behavior
      6. Practice Altitude Adjustment
      7. Make Unpopular and High-Risk Decisions
  11. Appendix
    1. Ninety-Nine Ways to be Thoughtfully Ruthless With Your Time
    2. Ninety-Nine Ways to be Thoughtfully Ruthless With Your Energy
    3. Ninety-Nine Ways to be Thoughtfully Ruthless With Your Resources
  12. About the Author
  13. Index
  14. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: Thoughtfully Ruthless
  • Author(s): Val Wright
  • Release date: April 2016
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781119222576