• The Leader's Guide

  • By: Eric Ries
  • Narrated by: Eric Ries
  • Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (429 ratings)

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The Leader's Guide

By: Eric Ries
Narrated by: Eric Ries
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Go Behind the Scenes with Eric Ries

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Publisher's summary

After the publication of his New York Times best-selling book, The Lean Startup, entrepreneur and author Eric Ries traveled the world helping companies of every size adopt the Lean Startup approach in order to become more nimble and experimental no matter what their mission. The Leader’s Guide collects and distills the practical, results-oriented advice Ries has dispensed to entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders at early-stage startups, blue chip corporations, and massive federal government agencies.

The Leader’s Guide is for both those who are new to Lean Startup as well as those who love the methodology in principle, but want to know more about how to put it into practice. Packed with real-world examples, the book sheds light on how innovators are tackling questions like:

  • How can I convince my team that testing our early ideas with customers doesn’t mean we should sacrifice quality or forget about our vision?
  • How can I convince senior leadership that innovation projects require a different system of accounting?
  • How can we turn functional specialists in areas like IT, HR, and finance into allies when it comes to supporting new ideas?

Each chapter focuses on an essential principle of Lean Startup strategy and includes an interview with leaders who have been using the method effectively, like Dustin Moskovitz, CEO and founder of Asana, and Chris Boeckerman, Director of Innovation at Procter & Gamble. 

Whether you’ve just discovered The Lean Startup, are a practitioner who wants to dive deeper, or work at a company trying to incorporate it at scale, The Leader’s Guide is the ultimate master class in successfully implementing Lean Startup methodology at your organization.    

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Eric Ries (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.

Editorial Review

Move fast and listen to good leadership advice

Through his books The Startup Way and The Lean Startup, Eric Ries has achieved leadership-guru status among those hoping to emulate the success of companies born and bred in and around Silicon Valley—both literally and zeitgeistily. (If you’ve seen a lot of email signatures with variations on the word "entrepreneur" in them, you probably have him to thank.) Buzzwords aside, getting managers to embrace the "move fast and break things" mentality espoused by a certain Northern Californian breed of employee isn’t always easy. That’s why Ries’s Leader's Guide, with its prescriptive advice on how to implement these iconoclastic philosophies, is bound to be a must-listen for the new-era workplace. —Courtney R., Audible Editor

Editor's Pick

Move fast and listen to good leadership advice
"Through his titles The Startup Way and The Lean Startup, Eric Ries has achieved leadership-guru status among those hoping to emulate the success of companies born and bred in and around Silicon Valley—both literally and zeitgeistily. (If you’ve seen a lot of email signatures with variations on the word ‘entrepreneur’ in them, you probably have him to thank.) Buzzwords aside, getting managers to embrace the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality espoused by a certain Northern Californian breed of employee isn’t always easy. That’s why Ries’s Leader's Guide, with its prescriptive advice on how to implement these iconoclastic philosophies, is bound to be a must-listen for the new-era workplace."
Courtney R., Audible Editor

What listeners say about The Leader's Guide

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A very good one. But where is the companion PDF?

The author is excellent.
But he mentioned about the PDF companion.
I cannot find it on Audible.

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17 people found this helpful

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  • FG
  • 05-06-19

Valuable insights and practical advice for leaders in any size company

I was incredibly impressed with the quality of this audio book. I’m always a little wary when an author decides to narrate their own book - even if the content is great, poor narration will ruins any audio book.

Fortunately, Eric Ries delivered an impeccable narration performance, with excellent pacing, good valence shifts, and even different voices when quoting other people. He also includes several fascinating interviews with business leaders, and it made for great listening.

Regarding the content itself, I wasn’t sure how relevant it would be to me. In my day job, I’m basically a middle-manager, and I run a small business doing consulting work on the side. It turns out this whole book was perfect for me - great tools, clearly articulated principles, and useful actions I can take to move forward both in a bigger company and with my own work.

I think this book is incredibly useful for anyone interested in business, lean start up, and how to bring about positive change at any level of the organization.

Highly recommended!

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10 people found this helpful

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Boring and vague

I was a big fan of the Lean Startup, and this was a huge disappointment. It was vague, repetitive, and not actionable. Narration was okay

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One of a Kind

This audiobook is unique in a great way because of the inclusion of an interview after each chapter. Those along make it worth getting, but it also works as a fantastic follow up to The Lean Startup, going into more depth on ways to implement the ideas.

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Lots of details. Moves too slowly.

I couldn’t finish this one. It moves too slowly.
There are other options that I’m sure are better.

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Read 'The Lean Startup' and skip this re-hash

This book did not live up to its description. For me, this was not a 'leader's guide' - it repeated the information in Eric Ries' very good book 'The Lean Startup' and added some interviews from mgrs who successfully employed those techniques. The problem is that the interviews were very shallow. The idea behind this book was fine, but the execution fell very short - it is not a 'Leader's Guide'. Save your time and money - read 'The Lean Startup' and skip 'The Leader's Guide'.

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struggled to finish it

not what leadership is in my opinion. offering opertunity to others is not leading. its filling a position.

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Eric Ries delivers a great book.

The book contains great value for people looking for better ways to deliver happiness/value to customers.

You will enjoy this book. I do recommend it.

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Worth reading (even more if you haven’t read the lean startup yet)

There is not much new in this book if you have read the lean startup. The same concepts are discussed at a much higher level with little detail but extensive examples and practical use of the concepts.

If you are doubting whether you should read the lean startup or not, then start here and you will certainly be hungering for more and be reto take the full learning from the original book.

However if you have already started your lean start up journey this book could be a good source to keep your motivation in hard moments. Review the basics concepts and pepper your learning with new examples and practical ideas.

At the end of the book you get a bonus on change management which reads to me as the intro of the next book.
In all cases you won’t waste your time reading it. Be mindful of what YIU can expect.

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Another repackaging

if you've read one Lean Startup book, you've read them all #IMHO. The ideas and presentation are fine. There's just not much that's new about it. Same ideas, different context Then again, I suppose that's also the nature of innovation in a way isn't it?

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