Novel set in China

Coordinate d'Oriente

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

A very nice novel. 
A story set between Turin and Shanghai.
Vivid descriptions of expat life in China: the pet market, the old town, 580 Nanjing lu market, the wife market, the French concession, Pudong and others...
A must read for who has been living in Shanghai, as I did. You will be touched.

Self-empowerment

Going out of your comfort-zone

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

In order to learn new things it is important to go out of our comfort zone.

Not easy right?

Let's see a nice video about it.

Open here the video

Books on Leadership

Which are the best books on Leadership of all times?

Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

I was reading a book on leadership "Jack Welch and the 4E's of leadership" -Jeffrey Krames and I was wondering which could be considered the best books on leadership of all times. Searching on the web I found some lists on the following website:

• Goodreads
• Amazon
• CEO.com

What is your opinion? Which are the best books on leadership you have read?

Leadership competencies - Building higly effective teams - Recommended book

The FIVE dysfunctions of a team - P. Lencioni

 

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

 

When, in our consultancy projects, we support teams to improve their effectiveness, we often recommend Leaders to read this book.

 

The book become a common ground of discussion during the working sessions where we help the team to overcome the 5 dysfunctions of a team highlighted by Lencioni.

 

Helpful reading for all leaders and team members.

 

 

 

 

 

Neil Gaiman: 'Face facts: we need fiction' - The Guardian

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

For book lovers there is no doubt about the importance of reading, but just in case anybody has... read this article Continue on The Guardian

China business culture books - recommended by us (1)

Chinese business etiquette by Scott D. Seligman

Recommended by Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (4)

The engagement equation 
Leadership strategies for an inspired workforce
by Christophere Rice, Fraser Marlow, Mary Masarech

Recommended by Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Do you want to know what engagement is and how to engage your staff? This is a wonderful reading, insightfull and pragmatic. Engagment is an equation of Motivation and Performance and different levels in the organization play different roles in fostering an engaging culture, including the individual because we can createan  engaging environment but we cannot make people engaged, only themselves can do.

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (3)

The five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni

Recommended by Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Managing effectively an executive team is not a easy task and often unsuccesfull business results come from un unsuccesfull team. Patrick Lencioni in this book describes  the main 5 dysfunctions that teams mostly face and, using a "novel" style, tell us how Kathryn Petersen, newly appointed CEO of fictional company DecisionTech, Inc.ibe solve the issue.

Five dysfunctions of a team:

1. Absence of trust—unwilling to be vulnerable within the group
2. Fear of conflict—seeking artificial harmony over constructive passionate debate
3. Lack of commitment—feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization
4. Avoidance of accountability—ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards
5. Inattention to results—focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (2)

Working identity: unconventional strategies for reinventing your career by Hermina Ibarra



 


How Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into Reality Whether as a daydream or a spoken desire, nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we're doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we've invested in our current profession.

In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we've learned from "career experts." While common wisdom holds that we must first know what we want to do before we can act, Ibarra argues that this advice is backward. Knowing, she says, is the result of doing and experimenting. Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become.

Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that leverages three ways of "working identity": experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities. Through engrossing stories-from a literature professor turned stockbroker to an investment banker turned novelist-Ibarra reveals a set of guidelines that all successful reinventions share.

She explores specific ways that hopeful career changers of any background can: " Explore possible selves " Craft and execute "identity experiments" " Create "small wins" that keep momentum going " Survive the rocky period between career identities " Connect with role models and mentors who can ease the transition " Make time for reflection-without missing out on windows of opportunity " Decide when to abandon the old path in order to follow the new " Arrange new events into a coherent story of who we are becoming.

A call to the dreamer in each of us, Working Identity explores the process for crafting a more fulfilling future. Where we end up may surprise us. Herminia Ibarra is Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Leadership & Career management books - recommended by us (1)

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel



An updated and revised version of the bestselling The Leadership Pipeline - the critical resource for how companies can grow leaders from the inside. In business, leadership at every level is a requisite for company survival. Yet the leadership pipeline -the internal strategy to grow leaders - in many companies is dry or nonexistent. Drawing on their experiences at many Fortune 500 companies, the authors show how organizations can develop leadership at every level by identifying future leaders, assessing their corporate confidence, planning their development, and measuring their results. New to this edition is 65 pages of new material to update the model, share new stories and add new advice based on the ten more years of experience. The authors have also added a "Frequently Asked Questions" section to the end of each chapter.

The book describes very clearly which are the different requirements from each  Leadership career step in terms of skills, values, Time focus and suggest learning actions aimed to develop people for the next transition

Leadership career steps:

1) Individual Constributors
2) Manager of others
2) Manager of managers
3) Functional Manager
4) Business Manager
5) Group Manager
6) Enterprise manager