If you've been inspired by a Studer Community Institute training session, keep the fire burning.

First, don't forget to register for our Hiring Talent workshop, coming up this Thursday, Aug. 25, at Hillcrest Baptist Church. Doors open at 8 a.m. and the session runs from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. The cost is $75-$89.

Leaders Amie Remington and Kristine Rushing will highlight the cost of employee turnover, how to make the most of the hiring process to keep your turnover low, and tips on behavioral interviews, peer interviews, and more. Get details and register here.

This reading list, featuring authors and professionals whose work Institute founder Quint Studer often credits with informing his own work, can help you delve deeper and keep the learning process alive.

“Results That Last” by Quint Studer

In Results That Last, Studer teaches leaders in every industry how to apply his tactics and strategies to their own organizations to build a corporate culture that consistently reaches and exceeds its goals. He has a gift for helping struggling companies implement and hardwire brilliantly simple fixes that solve larger problems in a self-perpetuating, almost organic way. Written in a conversational, easy-to-read format, each chapter includes compelling real-world stories that bring Studer's prescriptions to vibrant life. Results That Last offers sound, proven tactics for turning troubled businesses into consistent moneymakers. Results That Last has been listed on the Wall Street Journal's list of bestselling business books.

“Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip and Dan Heath

Change is hard, even when we know it’s good for us, even when we know we have to do it. Authors Chip and Dan Heath delve into this tension.

From their website:, Switch asks the following question: Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle, say the Heaths, is a conflict that’s built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

“The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization” by Peter Senge

From Amazon: This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.

“The Coming Jobs War” by Jim Clifton

What everyone in the world wants is a good job. In this book, Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, writes about how cities that will sustain themselves in an ever-more competitive marketplace will have to embrace entrepreneurs and encourage students to finish their high school education so that they can join the workforce as productive citizens. Cities are, he writes, “are the highest probability source of job creation.” Entrepreneurship, he writes, is more important than innovation.

“A Sense of Urgency” by John Kotter

Management control systems and damage control experts serve a critical purpose. But don’t let that blind you to an increasingly important reality. Controls can support complacency in an era when complacency can be deadly. Handled properly—and we know the rules for proper handling a crisis can offer an opportunity to increase needed urgency, an opportunity that cannot be disregarded.

“Leading Change” by John Kotter

Kotter presents an eight-stage process of change with highly useful examples that show how to go about implementing it. Based on experience with numerous companies, his sound advice gets directly at reasons that organizations fail to change, reasons that concern primarily the leader. This is a solid, substantive work that goes beyond the cliches and the consultant-of-the-month’s express down yet another dead-end street.

“Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell

There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them-at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. And in revealing that hidden logic, Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential.

In The Tipping Point Gladwell changed the way we understand the world. In Blink he changed the way we think about thinking. In OUTLIERS he transforms the way we understand success.

12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

101 Answers to Questions Leaders Have – Quint Studer

http://www.amazon.com/101-Answers-Questions-Leaders-Ask/dp/0974998621

Other suggested reading:

Small Giants https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/small-giants/id367458190?mt=11

Breakthrough Company - Keith McFarland – (Possibly bringing him to Pensacola)

http://www.breakthroughcompany.com

Good to Great - Jim Collins

Topgrading – Brad Smart and Geoff Smart

http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Hire-Coach-Keep-Players/dp/094400234X

What Your Clients Won't Tell You and Your Managers Don't Know – Gamble

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13117804-what-your-clients-won-t-tell-you-and-your-managers-don-t-know