This month, we'll hear summaries of three great business books: High Altitude Leadership by Chris Warner and Don Schmincke; You Can't Order Change by Peter S. Cohan; and A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter.

True urgency is a gut-level determination to move and win, now. Its practitioners are unusually alert. They come to work each day determined to achieve something important, and they shed irrelevant activities to move faster and smarter. Kotter reveals a distinctive view of the kind of urgency needed in every organization. He also highlights the insidious nature of its nemesis, complacency, in all its guises.

Kotter and co-author Dan S. Cohen delve deeper into the subject of change to get to the heart of how change actually happens. Through compelling, real-life stories from people in the trenches, in all kinds of organizations, the authors attack the fundamental problem that underlies every major transformation: How do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people's behavior?

Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few. In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. In this article, John Kotter outlines the eight largest errors that can doom these efforts.

This edition of Soundview Executive Book Summaries features condensed versions of three great business books: The Heart of Change by John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen; Why Decisions Fail by Paul C. Nutt; and Proactive Risk Management by Preston G. Smith and Guy M. Merritt.

The 4 articles in this collection from Harvard Business Review will stimulate any manager's thinking about his own role, mission, and style. Among the topics covered are the difference between being a manager and being a leader, the myths about a manager's job, and how to build your company's vision. These articles originally appeared in print in Harvard Business Review and are now available in audio format exclusively through Audible.

These articles from Harvard Business Review ask: Where does an effective corporate renewal begin? Why do transformation efforts often fail? How do you balance all the components of a change plan? The 3 articles in this selection discuss the delicate art of change management. These articles originally appeared in print in Harvard Business Review and are now available in audio format exclusively through Audible.