Jack Hemlick was a perfectionist and hated losing at anything. So, when an argument with his sister Kathryn goes too far and she kicks him out of her luxurious home, he decides to take up an offer to spend two weeks at a new island resort in the South Pacific.Hoping that the break would do them both good, Jack is first whisked to Panama in a private jet and then to the resort in a gigantic helicopter. It seemed that no expense was to be spared as his hosts pulled out all the stops to make sure that he was going to be well looked after.But once there he soon discovers that everything is almost too good to be true. Why was he invited to spend a vacation at no expense in this tiny island that seems to provide everything anyone would ever want? Who is the enigmatic Dr. Ladmile? And will this trip fix the rift between Jack and Kathryn, or just make the gulf between them even wider?Jack is about to find out that perfection isn't always the best.
4th and Goal Every day tells the improbable story of how Alabama won 5 national titles in 9 seasons. Fans want to know, “How does Alabama do it?” With a Preface by Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban and a Foreword by ESPN's College Gameday Host Rece Davis. Phil Savage first worked with Nick Saban when they both joined the Cleveland Browns’ coaching staff in 1991. They were reunited in 2009 when Savage became part of the Crimson Tide Sports Network as the radio color analyst. Since then, Savage has enjoyed an up-close view of the Alabama program’s dedication to recruiting, its commitment to practice, and devotion to fundamentals. Now comes his 360-degree perspective on Alabama football and Coach Nick Saban’s unique coaching style, a style that has led the Crimson Tide to five Southeastern Conference titles, three consecutive College Football Playoff appearances and four national championships. Savage details Coach Saban’s year-round preparation, his willingness to adjust and his belief in “complimentary football.” The book offers a close look at their player development and practice habits and gives a glimpse of the Crimson Tide’s approach of playing every single down like it’s 4th and goal. You won’t find another person who can intelligently discuss Alabama football in public better than Phil Savage. Together with Ray Glier, this in-depth story chronicles how the Crimson Tide re-emerged as one of the true superpowers in college football.
A fascinating insight into how Toyota conceived, developed and launched its own luxury car brand - Lexus. This remarkable success story will explain how the Japanese giant went from zero to 25% share of the luxury car market in the space of only ten years.
In this book, author Nate Furuta, former chair and CEO of Toyota Boshoku America Inc., shares the story of his decades of experience directly leading the establishment of Toyota cultures outside Japan. Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), Toyota’s joint venture in California with General Motors, where he directly led the establishment of the most revolutionary labor-management agreement in the history of the US auto industry. In addition, Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground in Georgetown Kentucky at Toyota’s first full-scale, wholly owned manufacturing operation outside Japan, where he led (working directly with President Fujio Cho) the establishment of Toyota’s general management systems and culture there. This book tells the stories of establishing successful operations in those two iconic organizations as well as others. Furuta reveals details, both stories and process descriptions that only he can tell. He takes you along as he and others lead Toyota’s intense globalization from the early 1980s to recent days. He introduces you to the critical leaders in Toyota's history, such as Taiichi Ohno and Fujio Cho as well as Kenzo Tamai, the head of the company’s HRM function in the 1980s. This book is not about human-resource management (HRM) policies and procedures. It provides a deep dive into the way senior leaders embody deep awareness of HRM matters, developing and executing company strategy while at the same time developing organizational capability. The role of senior leaders isn’t just a matter of directing the company to achieve objectives; it is a matter of building the capability to achieve those objectives, consistently, and further developing capability as it executes. Key to this is to develop the awareness, attitude, capability, and practice of identifying problems as progress is made toward achieving objectives, which is, in fact, attained through steadily eliminating each problem as it arises. This becomes a self-reinforcing loop of the organization, tapping in to the essence of solving problems while simultaneously developing ever better problem-solving skills and better problem solvers. This loop propels an organization toward meeting its purpose while developing capability for capability development. Essentially, this book reveals Toyota’s general management systems from the firsthand experience of a Toyota Japanese senior manager and describes, with stories and process examples, the attitude, behaviors, and systems needed to successfully establish and lead in a true Lean business environment.
Controversial, confrontational, and driven, Coach Geno Auriemma is a force to be reckoned with -- and the most accomplished male coach in women's basketball today. In his relentless quest for excellence at the University of Connecticut, he has led the Huskies to five national championships. Yet his soul never rests. For Auriemma, life affords only the briefest moments of happiness -- a good round of golf, forty minutes of great basketball, a day at the beach with his family, a nice glass of wine -- while disaster is seemingly always waiting to strike. It's a fatalistic philosophy, a remnant of his hardscrabble early years, but it's an outlook that has driven him to unparalleled success. In this deeply personal memoir, Geno Auriemma reveals for the first time the man behind the legend. He talks candidly about his coaching style, famed for being one of the most demanding in all the sports world. He spills the beans about his stormy dealings with other coaches such as his archrival, Pat Summitt, of the University of Tennessee. And with warmth and a genuine love for his champions, he writes openly about Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Nykesha Sales, Rebecca Lobo, Swin Cash, and all of his other UConn stars who have gone on to stellar WNBA careers. You get a courtside seat to all of the action -- including an epilogue on the 2004-05 season, as well as interviews with the team's most celebrated players. A rare look inside the soul of a true competitor, GENO is the story of how one passionate man overcame his own fears to achieve an extraordinary record of success.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A memoir of leadership and success: The executive chairman of Disney, Time’s 2019 businessperson of the year, shares the ideas and values he embraced during his fifteen years as CEO while reinventing one of the world’s most beloved companies and inspiring the people who bring the magic to life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger—think global—and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets. Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era. In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including: • Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming. • Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity. • Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale. • Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them. This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology. “The ideas in this book strike me as universal” Iger writes. “Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.”
The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music assembles a broad spectrum of contemporary perspectives on how "sound" functions in an equally wide array of popular music. Ranging from the twang of country banjoes and the sheen of hip-hop strings to the crunch of amplified guitars and the thump of subwoofers on the dance floor, this volume bridges the gap between timbre, our name for the purely acoustic characteristics of sound waves, and tone, an emergent musical construct that straddles the borderline between the perceptual and the political. Essays engage with the entire history of popular music as recorded sound, from the 1930s to the present day, under four large categories. "Genre" asks how sonic signatures define musical identities and publics; "Voice" considers the most naturalized musical instrument, the human voice, as racial and gendered signifier, as property or likeness, and as raw material for algorithmic perfection through software; "Instrument" tells stories of the way some iconic pop music machines-guitars, strings, synthesizers-got (or lost) their distinctive sounds; "Production" then puts it all together, asking structural questions about what happens in a recording studio, what is produced (sonic cartoons? rockist authenticity? empty space?) and what it all might mean.
When Dr. Bluestein would tell someone that she just finished writing a book on perfectionism, she would often hear a whole tirade on shoddy workmanship and terrible customer service. 'If you ask me, we need a whole lot more perfectionism,' one individual insisted
In Where the Colors Blend, Stephen Copeland’s self-discovery and God-discovery is told over a period of six years in the context of an annual retreat to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Roanoke, Virginia, where an obscure, forty-year-old church softball tournament takes place each summer to raise funds for mission work in Paraguay. In stepping into these stories, and sharing them with the reader, Stephen simultaneously journeys deeper within himself, discovering the divine in the process and taking readers deep into the throes of doubt, deconstruction, and depression. But it’s there, in the darkness, that an authentic hope finds him. Throughout the narrative, readers experience with Stephen a number of paradigm shifts in the areas of: Spirituality: from exhausting oneself trying to get close to God to simply abiding: awakening to who we already are at the core of our beings as children of God. Psychology: from suppressing emotions, pains, and insecurities to curiously and non-judgmentally exploring them. Relationships: from trying to change others or silently judging them to accepting others as they are and learning from those who are most different than ourselves: abandoning ignorance and arrogance. Art, writing, and work: from being taunted by internal demands and a relentless pursuit of perfection to simply enjoying the gift of the process. Stephen's present-tense narrative, mysteriously unfolding all the way, is free-thinking and free-flowing, swinging from humor to complex theology, from someone else’s story to sudden introspectiveness and application, creating a unique experience for readers as it challenges them to adopt their own lifestyle of introspection and contemplation.
In his quest to define ‘sporting greatness’, double Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee has spent nearly 4 years interviewing and training with some of the greatest minds in sport to discover what it takes to become – and remain – a champion.
