"Read this book, apply its concepts, and see how your business transforms.” — Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and #1 Leadership Thinker Outstanding leaders make business indispensable. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "Indispensable" as being absolutely necessary and not subject to being set aside or neglected. INDISPENSABLE: Build and Lead A Company Customers Can’t Live Without provides a framework that you can follow to transform your business and features dozens of examples from industry including those drawn from Amazon, Uber, Facebook and more. Each business example illustrates how the concepts offered in the book are already being used to make businesses indispensable in the marketplace. Keep in mind, though, only your customers can decide if your business is indispensable. We don’t get a vote on that. However, there are steps that we can take to improve our chances. A Leader's pursuit of greatness for his or her company is important, but, it’s not enough, and a business does not become indispensable by accident. Outstanding leadership is essential to bring a company from greatness to indispensability. This is an important distinction because anything less than outstanding leadership will not suffice. Why? Outstanding leaders lead by example. They demonstrate desired qualities and behaviors to their followers through their actions and conduct. By doing so, these leaders put forth a sense that they and their teams share the same goals and aspirations, and, that together, they are going to go about achieving these ambitions as one. Indispensable businesses share a common purpose so they need leaders that can set the example. As you read the book, you will come to recognize how vital TRUE leadership is to helping your business become indispensable. Regardless of your rank or position, you must study, learn, exemplify and LIVE these essential behaviors to be able to provide the people you work with and serve: A Captivating Vision: Outstanding leaders can articulate a vision for the future that every staff member can understand and buy-in to. This vision becomes the stuff of rallying cries and establishes the common goal that leader and team will share. Outstanding leadership is required to articulate the vision of being indispensable and to work to drive it deep into the enterprise. If the troops don’t “get” it, they won’t follow. Active Direction-Setting: Next, a game plan for execution must be built in support of that vision. But, building a plan without engaged direction-setting will not suffice. Outstanding leaders at every level will be fully involved, monitoring progress and charting the course for execution throughout their firm’s journey to indispensability. Enlightened Coaching: Outstanding leaders support their team and understand how to provide the “right” touch at the “right” time – directive when the path to success is unclear and supportive when it’s time to empower – just like any world-class coach does when building a champion. A Collaborative Environment: Outstanding leaders know how to establish a collaborative tenor within their area of responsibility. Selfish and egocentric behavior is stomped out; teamwork is recognized and rewarded. There are many great companies – only a few are indispensable. This book was written to help you build an indispensable business – one that your customers can’t live without.

Scholars working for communities' rights in California's Central Valley In the Struggle tells the story of the persistent engagement of eight public scholars spanning generations of sustained endeavor, a dogged war in which workers and scholars together repeatedly took on the powerful agricultural industry, the political machines, and even the universities. The stories begin in the 1930s with Paul Taylor, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered field research and activism as he travelled through the areas marked by the Great Depression, together with his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. Working in the heart of California's agricultural Central Valley, Taylor was the first of a succession of scholars who shared the dual commitment to research and engagement, to making problems visible and to effecting change through strategic action. Taylor and Lange intentionally wove their political engagement into their identities and work as researchers, as they conducted studies, led strikes, organized underserved communities, founded community development programs, created nonprofit institutions, and more. This book documents a tradition of politically engaged scholarship in one of the world's most dramatic contexts, full of disparities and contradictions, but also ripe with opportunities to make a difference. It covers a struggle that continues undiminished in the present.

Recovering Benedict encourages us to nourish our physical and spiritual lives using the Rule of Benedict and the twelve-step recovery principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. As the “father of Western monasticism,” Benedict pulled together various strands of monastic spirituality into a single handbook for holiness. Alcoholics Anonymous presented an equally innovative way to address alcoholism based on twelve steps drawn from numerous spiritual sources. While it took a sixth-century Italian collating various sources to produce a handbook for spiritual life, it likewise took a twentieth-century American to pull together the spiritual principles to recover one’s physical life. John E. Crean, Jr. brings both traditions together in one handbook for living: daily meditations are inspired by the down-to-earth wisdom of the Rule of Benedict, and AA’s template for sobriety and humbleness. A thoughtful daily devotional for all who wish for deeper healing, for personal use, or group study.

Society today faces multi-dimensional challenges that are hard to define and even harder to deal with. Social and economic systems throughout the world are becoming more complex and interdependent, and globalization is moving beyond the sphere of economics to engulf other aspects of life, particularly culture and security. Our current theories, strategies, and road maps are fast becoming out-dated and no new ones have emerged to take their place. Mohamed Rabie re-examines the relevance of major ideas and systems of the recent past, including ideology and its relation to society in Global Economic and Cultural Transformation. This book is an attempt defines and explains this transitional period and provides a new conception of economic and societal world history, which us understand how we got here and where we are going.

The stuff that comes after modernism isn't all bad. Postmodernism, not needing everything to be buttoned up, can leave things dangling; it can pay attention to the obscure, marginal, and particular. The postmodern dynamic invites one to revisit biblical texts that do not fit into tidy, cherished theological constructs: I call these texts the "minority reports." Popular theology infers that God is just pretending when he changes his mind or gets frustrated, saddened, and affected by humans--this understanding is guided by concepts of God's omni-attributes. But these wise and well-intentioned concepts fail to portray a God who will not be domesticated. Certain biblical narratives trace YHWH's hiddenness, suffering, changeability, and "hostility"--this awkward "shadow side" of YHWH is sometimes selectively overlooked. The fear of God is gone. Instead we have the ever-tolerant, universal God who is in danger of evaporating into "spirit," "light," and "love." As a theologian I use Hebrew block logic: competing truths in the Bible are kept intact; synthesis isn't necessarily sought. God chooses us and we choose God; God is self-sufficient, all-powerful, and all-knowing, needing no creature. Yet he chooses to limit his "omni-ness" in the human arena and makes himself vulnerable to humans. He hyphenates his name with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob--and the church--at a risk.