Thinking of starting your own business? Want to "move up" at work? Need to sharpen your leadership skills? Whatever reason you have, First Independent’s Business Tools are ready when you are.

Each book in our Tools Section links directly to our partner, Powells Books, the local bookseller.  When you access Powells Books through the First Independent web site, we will donate 7.5% of your total purchase to reading and education programs for children in the communities we serve.

Leadership

How to Think Like a CEO , D. A. Benton

Managing in the Next Society by Peter F. Drucker

John Wooden on Leadership,  John Wooden

Leadership on the Line , Ronald A Hefetz and Marty Linsky
How to put yourself on the line, respond effectively to the risks and live to celebrate our efforts.

Good to Great , Jim Collins
Leadership and management examples and ideas from the companies who've become great.
"No matter the size of your company, read this book!"

Hesselbein on Leadership , Frances Hesselbein, Foreword by Jim Collins
Former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA and Chairman and Founding president of the Drucker Foundation. "Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it."

The Leadership Challenge , James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Five proven, practical fundamentals of leadership, culled from more than 3,000 interviews

Confidence: How Winning & Losing Streaks Begin & End , Rossabeth Mos Kanter
A brilliant anatomy lesson of the big decisions and the small gestures that build and restore confidence in business.

Business Ethics , Milton Snoeyenbos, Robert Almeder, James M. Humber
Theories and case studies

Patrick Lencioni Library (Five Temptations of a CEO; Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; Five Dysfunctions of a Team; Death by Meeting), Patrick M. Lencioni
Each book presents an engaging "leadership fable" and provides analysis and practical advice that can be applied to the many challenges facing today's managers.

Management & Employees

First, Break all the Rules , Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
What the world's greatest managers do differently.

Execution, The Discipline of Getting Things Done , Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
A great plan is critical, but how do you execute? This book tells you how to get it done.

Six Sigma , Mikel Harry, Ph.D. and Richard Schroeder
The breakthrough management program revolutionizing the corporate world, garnering superior financial results.

What is Six Sigma? , Pete Pande and Larry Holpp
What the Six Sigma strategy means to employees. Includes the core ideas, roles and responsibilities of employees and Six Sigma benefits them.

"How Full Is Your Bucket?: Positive Strategies for Work & Life, Tom Rath & Donald O. Clifton, Ph. D
"A good one for managers/supervisors dealing with motivation and team building"

365 Ways to Motivate and Reward Your Employees Every Day: With Little or No Money , Dianna Podmoroff
Hundreds of inexpensive to reward and motivate your employees

Marketing, Branding & New Media

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More , Chris Anderson
Author is the editor of Wired magazine. The Booklist review states: this book claims development in the new digital world of an infinite number of niche markets of any size that are economically viable due to falling distribution costs and in the aggregate represent significant sales

Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
"A field guide to modern marketing"

The Cluetrain Manifesto,  Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Although written in 2000, it is an excellent conversation about considering the Internet to be a set of global conversations, helping to remake every social structure it is meeting including government, education, entertainment and BUSINESS.

Guerilla P.R. , Michael Levine
How to use the Internet to get your public relations message to your audience

A New Brand World , Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
Eight principles for achieving brand leadership written by a former Nike and Starbucks strategist.

Brand Warfare , David F D'Alessandro with Michele Owens
10 Rules for Building the Killer Brandy by the CEO of John Hancock

Customers

Satisfaction - How every great company listens to the voice of the customer - by Chris Denove and James D. Power IV

The Customer Revolution , Patricia B. Seybold
How to thrive when customers are in control

Romancing the Customer , Paul Temporal & Martin Trott
Maximizing brand value through powerful relationship management

Small Business Basics

Growing a Business  - Paul Hawken
Straight talk from people who own small and medium-sized businesses.

http://www.startupjournal.com/runbusiness/
"The Wall Street Journal's interactive online Center for Entrepreneurs with a tool kit, financial strategies, and information ranging from e-commerce to franchising and real life case studies from the people who lived it."

Looking at the World In New Ways

The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell
The moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold and becomes a phenomenon.

Blink , Malcolm Gladwell
About the choices we seem to make in an instant and why aren't as simple as they seem.

A Whole New Mind , Daniel H. Pink
Moving from the information age to the conceptual age, this book explains how workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities

Orbiting the Giant Hairball , Gordon MacKenzie
A corporate fool's guide to surviving with grace

Tools

Elements of Style , William Strunk Jr., E.B. White, and Roger Angell
The basics on composition, grammar, word usage and misusage, and writing style.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation , Lynne Truss
An easy-to-read conversation about the need for and reasons why we should punctuate correctly.

Magazines

Business Week - Weekly magazine of business news, profiles, book reviews, latest trends. www.businessweek.com

Fast Company - Monthly magazine that chronicles how the new companies create and compete, highlighting new business practices, and to showcase the teams and individuals who are reinventing business. www.fastcompany.com

Business 2.0 - Monthly business and technology news; products; innovation; and more. http://www.business20.com/

Fortune Small Business - Everything you need to know about small business, what's working, what's not, what's hot. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/