1.  Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best

• Author: Srinivas Rao
• Release Date: August 2, 2016
• Amazon Rating: 
• Overview: Stop trying to beat everyone else. True success is playing by your own rules, creating work that no one can replicate. Don’t be the best, be the only. You’re on the conventional path, checking off accomplishments. You might be doing okay by normal standards, but you still feel restless, bored, and limited. Srinivas Rao gets it. As a new business school graduate, Srinivas’s dreams were crushed by a soulless job that demanded only conformity. Sick of struggling to keep his head above water, Srinivas quit his job and took to the waves, pursuing his dream of learning to surf.  He also found the freedom to chart his own course. Interviewing more than five hundred creative people on his Unmistakable Creative podcast was the ultimate education. He heard how guests including Seth Godin, Elle Luna, Tim Ferriss, Simon Sinek, and Danielle LaPorte blazed their own trails. Srinivas blends his own story with theirs to tell you: You can find that courage too. Don’t be just one among many—be the only. Be unmistakable. Trying to be the best will chain you to others’ definition of success. Unmistakable work, on the other hand, could only have been created by one person, so competition is irrelevant. Like Banksy’s art or Tim Burton’s films, unmistakable work needs no signature and has no precedent. Whether you’re a business owner, an artist, or just someone who wants to leave your mark on the world, Unmistakable will inspire you to create your own path and define your own success.

2. Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies To Transform Wasteful Habits

• Author: Tanya Menon, Leigh Thompson
• Release Date: August 16, 2016
• Amazon Rating:
• Overview: Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money. You have a complex problem at work, and you know the standard solutions: hire a consultant, enlist a superstar employee, have more meetings about it. In short, spend money and hours to dig your way out. But you’ve been down this road before—the so-called solution consumes your time, dollars, and resources, and yet the problem still reappears. There is a way out of this cycle. Organizational researchers Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson, experts in collaboration and creativity, identify five spending traps that lead to this wasteful “action without traction”:The Expertise Trap: recycling old solutions on current problems
  The Winner’s Trap: investing additional resources into failing projects
  The Agreement Trap: avoiding conflict to feel like a team player
  The Communication Trap: communicating too frequently over too many channels
  The Macromanagement Trap: assuming your employees don’t need your directionMenon and Thompson combine their own research with other findings in psychology to provide strategies to break these unproductive habits and refine your skills as a manager. From shaping problems in new ways and learning from failure through experimentation, to stimulating productive conflict and structuring coordinated conversations, you can escape these traps and discover the value hidden in your organization—without spending a dime.

3. Nimble, Focused, Feisty: Organizational Cultures That Win In The New Era And How To Create Them

• Author: Sara Roberts
• Release Date: August 16, 2016
• Amazon Rating: N/A
• Overview: Leaders have talked about the importance of corporate culture for decades, but the success of iconic companies like GE, Apple, and Google shows how culture is a strategic lever that can be utilized for driving growth, change, and innovation. In this new age of globalization, rapid technology shifts, and constant disruption, the 21st century marketplace is more volatile and uncertain than ever. To thrive, businesses need a new kind of emphasis around culture.Sara Roberts, former CEO and founder of Roberts Golden and a seasoned executive consultant to dozens of Fortune 500 companies and CEOs, sees how flourishing companies—from established market leaders to the surprising upstarts—share three distinct attributes:Nimble: They are much faster and more agile than ordinary organizations
  Focused: They use their sense of purpose as a lens to understand and meet the needs of customers and markets
  Feisty: They play big and act bold to capitalize on advantages and out-muscle the competition

  In Nimble, Focused, Feisty, Roberts provides not only a look into what these organizations are doing differently but also a blueprint and framework so your company can create a cultural strategy to thrive in the new era.

4. The Start-Up J Curve: The Six Steps To Entrepreneurial Success

• Author: Howard Love
• Release Date: August 30, 2016
• Amazon Rating: N/A
• Overview: A predictable pattern of success. Entrepreneurs who have read early drafts of The Start-Up J Curve responded, ”I wish I had this book years ago.” A start-up unfolds in a predictable pattern; the more aware entrepreneurs are of this pattern, the better able they will be to capitalize on it. Author Howard Love calls this pattern the start-up J Curve: The toughest part of the endeavor is the time between the actual start of a new business and when the product and model are firmly established. The Start-Up J Curve gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to get through the early challenges so they can reach the primary value creation that lies beyond.Love brings thirty-five years of start-up experience to this comprehensive guide to starting a business. He outlines the six predictable stages of start-up growth and details the activities that should be undertaken at each stage to ensure success and to avoid common pitfalls. Instead of feeling lost and confused after a setback, start-up founders and investors can anticipate the challenges, overcome the obstacles, and ride the curve to the top.

5.  Head Ball Coach: My Life In Football, Doing It Differently–And Winning

• Author: Buddy Martin, Steve Spurrier
• Release Date: August 30, 2016
• Amazon Rating: N/A
• Overview: College football’s most colorful, endearing, and successful pioneer, Steve Spurrier, shares his story of a life in football — from growing up in Tennessee to winning the Heisman Trophy to playing and coaching in the pros to leading the Florida Gators to six SEC Championships and a National Championship to elevating the South Carolina program to new heights — and coaching like nobody else. He’s been called brash, cocky, arrogant, pompous, egotistical, and hilarious, but, mostly, he’s known as the Head Ball Coach. He is the only coach who can claim to be the winningest coach at two different SEC schools, and the only person who has won both the Heisman Trophy as a player and a national championship as a coach.From the beginning, Spurrier didn’t want to sound like other coaches, dress like other coaches, and, especially, coach like other coaches. As a controversial football pioneer, he ushered in a different style of leadership and play. Spurrier’s press conferences were glorious — he refused to lapse into coachspeak and was always entertaining, although he took his football very seriously. He was known for his fierce competitiveness, roaming up and down the sidelines, often throwing his signature visor to the ground in disgust.In his memoir, Spurrier talks for the first time about the circumstances under which he unexpectedly became a coach and why he resigned at South Carolina. He explains his unique style, the difference between winners and losers, his relationship with the media, why he follows the wisdom of ancient philosophers and warriors, his affinity everything taught by John Wooden, and the reasons behind his relaxed regimen for living well. Spurrier, as always, speaks candidly, bringing together his thoughts about his words, actions, and achievements, while telling countless wonderful anecdotes.