The Leader's Guide

By: Eric Ries

Narrated by: Eric Ries

Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Another insightful and pragmatic book by Eric

Another insightful and pragmatic book by Eric for leaders 9f both massive multinational companies and small startups oh how to effectively initiate and sustain lean methodologies within organizations. An amazing an essential follow up to "The Lean Start-up".

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.

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'.

Lean Startup pt2

Another invaluable lesson from Eric Reis. He really understands how you need to create and support innovate growth teams. This audio book has more great case studies and examples. If anyone in your business says you need to innovate, then refer them to his books first.

Big Companies' life insurance

I read the Lean Startup quite a while ago and loved it.
This book is taking the lean startup into big companies, dealing with company culture, metrics which only measure success not celebrate failure and learning.
I especially liked the comparison of the little innovative group in big companies to a life insurance from one of Eric's guests. Big companies can be like dinosaurs and hard to change. If you create small teams, encourage people to speak up, you can try to ensure the company won't go under as times change.
I am so happy that even big companies are starting to change.

Fantastic book. Truly career changing.

Eric Reis lifts the thought from a LEAN Startup up to a managerial level, summed up in inspiring discussions with industry veterans at the end of each chapter.

Good, but not as good as his other work

I really liked Eric Ries other audio books, I learned so much. This didn't have the same engagement or energy, but it had intervioews with people which was really good. Worth a listen.

Helps reinforce the lean startup

really enjoyed listening to this book especially the podcast like sections bringing real life examples into the story.