Permission To Screw Up

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead–and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they’re mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. It’s the story of how she went from being an almost comically inept leader to a sought-after CEO who teaches others how to lead. Hadeed unintentionally launched Student Maid while attending college ten years ago. Since then, Student Maid has employed hundreds of students and is widely recognized for its industry-leading retention rate and its culture of trust and accountability. But Kristen and her company were no overnight sensa­tion. In fact, they were almost nothing at all. Along the way, Kristen got it wrong almost as often as she got it right. Giving out hugs instead of feed­back, fixing errors instead of enforcing accountability, and hosting parties instead of cultivating meaning­ful relationships were just a few of her many mistakes. But Kristen’s willingness to admit and learn from those mistakes helped her give her people the chance to learn from their own screwups too. Permission to Screw Up dismisses the idea that leaders and orga­nizations should try to be perfect. It encourages people of all ages to go for it and learn to lead by acting, rather than waiting or thinking. Through a brutally honest and often hilarious account of her own strug­gles, Kristen encourages us to embrace our failures and proves that we’ll be better leaders when we do.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

A New York Times bestseller! In this irreverently funny, one-of-a-kind book, transformational comedian Kyle Cease shows you how to love failure and follow your heart, release the addictions of your mind, and live in a state of infinite possibility. If Eckhart Tolle and Jim Carrey had a baby, that baby would be Kyle Cease. After twenty-five years of achieving what he thought were his dreams of being a headlining touring comedian and actor, Kyle Cease suddenly discovered that the belief that “When something happens, I will be happy” is a complete lie. With nothing more than an intuition, he decided to quit his stand-up career at its peak, and now—as a transformational comedian, he brings his one-of-a-kind self-help wisdom to sold-out audiences in his Evolving Out Loud Live stage show. In I Hope I Screw This Up, he disarms readers as he leads them to their own personal breakthroughs, helping them to recognize that actual happiness and fulfillment is available to them—not in some distant future, but right now. As he has shown audiences all over the world, when you embrace your pain, fear, and vulnerability instead of pushing it away, you will discover an authentic creativity and power that is truly unstoppable. Using self-deprecating personal stories, hilarious observations on life, and poorly drawn illustrations, Kyle unravels the deepest issues standing between us and emotional freedom. From discovering the never-ending opportunities that come from playing—and going with whatever comes up in the moment—to learning to let go of what feels heavy in our lives, this book is a journey into the endless possibility that can appear if we just dare to let go of our fear of screwing up. This is not motivation. This is not inspiration. This is true transformation.

#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.”

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

A guide to understanding why your possessions keep overwhelming you and what to do about it, written by a professional organizer and psychotherapist. Do you spend much of your time struggling against the growing ranks of papers, books, clothes, housewares, mementos, and other possessions that seem to multiply when you're not looking? Do these inanimate objects, the hallmarks of busy modern life, conspire to fill up every inch of your space, no matter how hard you try to get rid of some of them and organize the rest? Do you feel frustrated, thwarted, and powerless in the face of this ever-renewing mountain of stuff? Help is on the way. Cindy Glovinsky, practicing psychotherapist and personal organizer, is uniquely qualified to explain this nagging, even debilitating problem -- and to provide solutions that really work. Writing in a supportive, nonjudmental tone, Glovinsky uses humorous examples, questionnaires, and exercises to shed light on the real reasons why we feel so overwhelmed by papers and possessions and offers individualized suggestions tailored to specific organizing problems. Whether you're drowning in clutter or just looking for a new way to deal with the perennial challenge of organizing and managing material things, this fresh and reassuring approach is sure to help. Making Peace with the Things in Your Life will help you cut down on your clutter and cut down on your stress!

Originally published: New York: Times Books, 1979.

Helicopter parent, tiger parent . . . lawnmower parent? Generation Z has a reputation of entitlement, but this attitude is often fostered by parents who mow down every obstacle in their child's path, never letting them fail. In How to Raise Perfectly Imperfect Kids and Be OK with It, humorist Lisa Sugarman takes her humanistic approach to parenting Gen Z kids and tells it like it is. Sugarman reminds parents that it's okay (and beneficial) for children to confront obstacles, it's okay if your children are not perfect, and it's okay to say "No." The goal is not to raise perfect children; the goal is to raise kind, responsible adults, and it's a process. How to Raise Perfectly Imperfect Kids reminds the reader that mistakes and problems lead to lessons. Fixating on raising the smartest, fastest, most successful child will never result in a happy child (or a happy parent). With healthy doses of humor and reality, Lisa Sugarman reminds us that our kids were never meant to be perfect, and perfectly imperfect kids can become wonderful, well-rounded adults if we just allow them to grow.