The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You
Tags: #business #leadership #management #strategy #sales #marketing #finance #innovation #creativity
Authors: Jack Covert, Todd Sattersten, Sally Haldorson
Overview
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time is a curated collection of books that can help businesspeople find solutions to a wide range of challenges. The recommendations are based on my twenty-five years of reading, reviewing, and recommending books in the business genre, and provide readers with a filter to help them navigate the ever-growing world of business books. The books are organized into twelve sections: You, Leadership, Strategy, Sales and Marketing, Rules and Scorekeeping, Management, Biographies, Entrepreneurship, Narratives, Innovation and Creativity, Big Ideas, and The Last Word. Within each section, the reviews themselves aim to stay true to the promise of our subtitle, “What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You.” We provide an amalgamation of a summary of the book, our own stories, the context for the ideas presented by the authors, and our take on how the book might best be used. You will find that the selections are not solely focused on companies and products, but also delve into the personal side of work and how our emotional and psychological well being are often overlooked contributors to success. We also address how the world of business has changed dramatically over the last several decades, and how change itself has accelerated due to globalization and new technology.
Book Outline
1. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Happiness comes in those moments of effortless concentration when time flies and we find we have accomplished a great deal. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow, when we are totally focused and completely un-self-conscious. Certain pursuits and activities lend themselves to reaching a state of flow.
Key concept: Flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Games, in the broadest sense, contain the elements that create flow: rules, practice, feedback. If jobs were constructed like games, flow would be reached more often at work.
2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
Traditional attempts to get organized fail because they don’t address the core problem: action. By defining and managing actions, ambiguous tasks are turned into clear next steps. Once those actions are captured using a reliable system, the mental noise clears, allowing space for more substantive thought.
Key concept: “The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them.” Poorly defined to-dos create a never-ending feedback loop of alternatives, keeping us from taking action.
3. The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
If efficiency is the ultimate measurement of manual labor, effectiveness is the corollary measurement for knowledge workers. Rather than doing things right, knowledge workers must strive for effectiveness by doing the right things. Effective executives have a tender loving care of time. They focus on contribution. And lastly, they solve problems once by finding a simple solution that works for everyone in the organization.
Key concept: “Effectiveness is, after all, not a ‘subject,’ but a self-discipline.” Efficiency, doing things right, is the wrong measurement for knowledge workers. Instead, knowledge workers must strive for effectiveness by doing the right things.
4. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
Business is not just about profit and loss, but also how our inner selves work to define our work selves. The antidote to disconnection is wholehearted living.
Key concept: “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Wholehearted living is the antidote to disconnection and a lack of belonging, and is composed of key pairs of intentions like joy and gratitude, calm and stillness, and intuition and faith.
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
To be a highly effective person, you need to focus not just on personality, behavior, and attitude, but on the quality of your character. There are 7 Habits to help guide you on your path to effectiveness.
Key concept: “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” There are 7 Habits of highly effective people. The first three are habits of private victory: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Put First Things First. The next three habits lead to public victory: Think Win/Win, Seek First to Understand…Then to be Understood, and Synergize. The last habit, Sharpen the Saw, is about the renewal of the individual.
6. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Knowing how to mend emotional breaks and maximize the potential in every relationship is essential in business and in life. To successfully manage relationships, always make the other person feel important…and do it sincerely.
Key concept: “Always make the other person feel important.” The three tenets of relating to people: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
7. Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
Business is a contact sport and succeeding in business requires a certain tenacity and approach. Swim with the Sharks is full of succinct lessons on how to handle yourself in a variety of business situations, surviving and thriving amid the “sharks” who are out to eat your lunch.
Key concept: “I used to say that networking is the most underrated management skill. Now I believe it may be the most important management skill, bar none.” Mackay offers 85 short chapters on topics ranging from sales and management to negotiations. For example: Always thank the customer after the sale; Hire people who would be great working for your competition; and when meeting a celebrity, find out what they are passionate about and talk about that.
8. The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
In high-intensity occupations, professionals often depend on intuition, or split-second decision making, to gather information quickly and act. By studying firefighters, U.S. Marine lance corporals, and neonatal nurses, Klein developed a teachable framework for intuition.
Key concept: “I define intuition as the way we translate our experience into action.” Klein’s decision loop starts by looking for cues in the situation as a whole. Those cues lead to the recognition of patterns, either positive or negative, which then trigger “action scripts,”. Each script is evaluated until a satisfactory answer is found. Then, we act and start the process over again.
9. What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
Everyone faces that turning point in life, the moment where you need to ask yourself the universal question, “What should I do with my life?” By learning from the experiences of regular folks who dared to be honest with themselves, we can overcome those ghosts and stumbling blocks and find our true calling.
Key concept: “The most common question I’d get asked was, ‘So is your book about life, or about careers?’ And I’d laugh, and warn them not to get trapped by semantics, and answer, ‘It’s about people who’ve dared to be honest with themselves.’” Bronson traveled the country interviewing people from all walks of life to find out what they should be doing with their life. Eight chapters detail the ghosts and stumbling blocks that keep people from finding their true calling.
10. The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
Every new job transition, no matter how big or small, requires a certain approach to succeed. Watkins provides a framework for accelerating learning, developing relationships, and matching expectations.
Key concept: “The President Gets 100 Days to Prove Himself - You Get 90.” Watkins emphasizes speed. You need to accelerate your learning in the early days, secure early wins, and build coalitions. Most importantly, you need to understand that you have a new job, promote yourself by understanding the requirements of that role, and adjust your approach.
11. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
This is a book about self-improvement, not just for our work, but for our lives. It’s a book about approaching challenges with courage and hope. It’s about finding those optimal experiences that will provide us with periods of happiness and growth.
Key concept: “And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)” Seuss’s story covers the challenges and uncertainty in everyone’s life journey. But, even in the face of those challenges, there is one constant we can count on: Hope.
12. On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
Leadership cannot be taught, it must be learned through experience. Developing character and vision is the way leaders invent themselves, finding a balance between their logical and emotional sides.
Key concept: “[M]ore leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together. Leadership courses can only teach skills. . . . Developing character and vision is the way leaders invent themselves.” Bennis says successful leaders are those who can access and express their true selves. He asks us to reflect on how our family, friends, and school have shaped our beliefs and then use those beliefs to discover who we really are.
13. Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
Don’t be afraid to disrupt the staid approach to business. Good leadership can be irreverent and fun, yet still get results.
Key concept: “Reorganizing: Should be undergone about as often as major surgery. And should be as well planned and as swiftly executed.” Townsend provides short, to-the-point chapters on topics ranging from budgets to decisions to hiring.
14. The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
The Leadership Moment is a time when our credibility and reputation is on the line, when the fate or fortune of others depends on what we do. Real leaders understand this moment and use it to make a difference, but often face great consequences.
Key concept: “Leadership is at its best when the vision is strategic, the voice persuasive, the results tangible.” Useem uses the story of Wagner Dodge and the 1949 Mann Gulch fire to show how a leader’s credibility and reputation are tested in moments of crisis.
15. The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
To be a successful leader, you need to be able to inspire your followers with a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart.
Key concept: “Leadership is not a gene and it’s not an inheritance. Leadership is an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to all of us.” Kouzes and Posner surveyed thousands of people to find out what they valued in a leader. They then correlated their findings with the common themes underlying successful leadership. Five governing practices are presented: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
16. Leadership Is an Art by Max de Pree
Leading with style is about more than just your appearance, it is about liberating people to do what is required of them, in the most effective and humane way possible. This type of leadership removes the separation between the life we lead at home and that which we lead at the office.
Key concept: “Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed.” De Pree believes the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling the gifts of those in an organization.
17. The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
Fables and parables are effective ways to communicate complex business ideas because they are easy to understand and make the message memorable. Extreme leadership is about more than just doing your job, it is about finding and living your passion.
Key concept: “‘Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.’” Farber uses the acronym LEAP to illustrate his idea of ‘extreme leadership’: cultivate Love, generate Energy, inspire Audacity, and provide Proof.
18. Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman
Changing a company’s direction when things are going well is a significant challenge, but it is possible. By focusing on the company’s core strengths and empowering employees to eliminate unnecessary work, you can create a dynamic environment for change.
Key concept: “Peter Drucker . . . greatly influenced [Jack] Welch by writing, ‘If you weren’t already in the business, would you enter it today?’” Welch had to convince a workforce of 420,000 employees that life at GE was good, but it could be better. To spur change, Welch made his now-famous declaration that every GE business would be number one or number two in their markets and vowed to “fix, close, or sell” any business that did not meet those standards.
19. Leading Change by John P. Kotter
Change is inevitable and accelerating. To make change permanent requires strong leadership, not just management. Kotter’s eight-stage change process helps you create and maintain lasting change.
Key concept: “Enterprises everywhere will be presented with even more terrible hazards and wonderful opportunities, driven by the globalization of the economy along with related technology and social trends.” Kotter compares a change initiative to redirecting a river: to permanently change the flow, you need to constantly maintain the new direction. To be successful, change requires 70-90 percent leadership and only 10-30 percent management.
20. The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
In a world overloaded with information, the ability to tell a compelling story is an essential asset for any leader. Good stories have the power to persuade, motivate, and inspire change.
Key concept: “Values are meaningless without stories to bring them to life and engage us on a personal level.” Simmons outlines six types of stories that can be used to influence others: Who I am; Why I am Here; the Vision; Teaching; Values-in-Action; and I Know What You Are Thinking.
21. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
Women face a variety of unique challenges in the workplace, and to overcome them, need to change their approach to dealing with those challenges, starting with taking control of their fears.
Key concept: “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.” Sandberg argues that women undermine their own ambitions because of fear: fear of not being liked, fear of making the wrong choice, fear of drawing negative attention, fear of overreaching, fear of being judged, fear of failure, and the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
22. In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr.
Prior to 1982, there was a lack of meaningful discussion about what makes a business successful. Peters and Waterman filled the void with In Search of Excellence, using stories and research to show how the human element drives success.
Key concept: “In observing the excellent companies, and specifically the way they interact with customers, what we found most striking was the consistent presence of obsession. This characteristically occurred as a seemingly unjustifiable overcommitment to some form of quality, reliability, or service.” Peters and Waterman present eight principles of organizational behavior: A Bias for Action; Stay Close to the Customer; Autonomy and Entrepreneurship; Productivity Through People; Hands-On, Value-Driven; Stick to the Knitting; Simple Form, Lean Staff; and Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties.
23. Good to Great by Jim Collins
Good to Great uses a rational approach to understand how companies can alter their course and achieve greatness. By focusing on long-term growth, finding the right team, and leveraging technology, any company can move from good to great.
Key concept: “Good is the enemy of great.” Collins uses the ‘hedgehog concept’ to describe the intersection of three circles: what you can be best in the world at, what drives your economic engine, and what you are deeply passionate about.
24. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
Business leaders need to understand the differences between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. To take advantage of disruptive innovations, companies need to create separate organizations with the appropriate cost structure, and a different way of thinking.
Key concept: “‘To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.’” Christensen uses the terms ‘sustaining innovations’ to describe new product development and features that meet customers’ needs, and ‘disruptive innovations’ to describe innovation that does not initially meet customer expectations or needs. He shows how the latter can lead to significant change.
25. Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
Every business and industry is constantly evolving, and to survive change, you need to be able to recognize those moments where the company’s strategic plan no longer applies. Grove uses stories of his own experience with Intel and the computer industry to show how being aware and responding quickly is essential to succeeding.
Key concept: “Managing, especially managing through a crisis, is an extremely personal affair.” Grove uses the acronym SIP, for Strategic Inflection Point, to describe those moments in the life of a business where its continued success is threatened by change. The key to managing change is awareness and being able to react quickly to a SIP.
26. Beyond the Core by Chris Zook
It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day running of a business and miss the big picture. The key to continuous growth is focus and understanding those close opportunities, called adjacencies, that allow you to draw on your company’s existing strengths.
Key concept: “Strong leaders in robust markets epitomize the epithet of Sun Tzu: ‘The more opportunities I seize, the more opportunities multiply before me.’” Zook calls these opportunities adjacencies, business opportunities that allow a company to extend the boundaries of its core business by drawing on skills that already exist. He describes five dimensions to consider when planning an adjacent move: Customers, Competitors, Cost structure, Channels of distributions, and Singular capability.
27. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
Our day-to-day interactions are governed by deep-seeded innate behaviors, or shortcuts in thinking. These innate behaviors can be used positively, but can also be used to exploit us. Influence shows you how to recognize and manage the psychology of persuasion.
Key concept: “I define influence as the way we translate our experience into action.” Cialdini says there are six different forms of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, affection, authority, and scarcity. These shortcuts in thinking are essential for us to navigate a world that is constantly becoming more complex.
28. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Positioning is the process of getting your product into the minds of your customers. To do that successfully, you need to deliver a simplified message and find ways to get there first.
Key concept: “Positioning is an organized system for finding windows in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances.” Ries and Trout believe that consumers are bombarded with information and that the human mind has developed a defense mechanism for dealing with the resulting overload of product and service offerings.
29. A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
Brand building is an essential process for every company and is not just a message created by your marketing department. Bedbury uses stories of his experience with Starbucks and Nike to explain the process.
Key concept: “Relevance, simplicity, and humanity - not technology - will distinguish brands in the future.” Bedbury outlines eight universal principles of brand building: simplicity, patience, relevance, accessibility, humanity, omnipresence, and innovation.
30. Zag by Marty Neumeier
To stand out in a world filled with clutter and noise, you need to be different, and not just a little different, you need to ‘zag.’ Zag provides the framework for developing, building, and renewing the thing that makes your company, your product, or your service stand out from the herd.
Key concept: “The quickest route to a zag is to look at what competitors do, then do something different. No - REALLY different.” Neumeier uses the child’s game Rock, Paper, Scissors to show how to find the white space in your market.
31. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
In the technology sector, there is a gap in the adoption of new technology between early adopters and the early majority. The key to successfully crossing the chasm is to focus on a single niche in the mainstream, build alliances, and offer compatibility.
Key concept: “The chasm phenomenon . . . drives all emerging high-tech enterprises to a point of crisis where they must leave the relative safety of their established early market and go out in search of a new home in the mainstream.” Moore uses the well-established framework for how new products and services are adopted to show how a gap, or ‘chasm’, exists between early adopters and the majority.
32. Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
Selling and closing are not mysteries to be solved, they are tangible processes that require understanding and practice.
Key concept: “The prospect is persuaded more by the depth of your conviction than he is by the height of your logic.” Ziglar offers numerous stories that reveal techniques for selling. He also points out how important it is to be sincere.
33. How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
A rainmaker is the person who brings the revenue into an organization. How to Become a Rainmaker is a collection of strategies for maximizing your success as a rainmaker.
Key concept: “[T]he paramount job of every single employee in an organization is to, directly or indirectly, get and keep customers.” Fox uses numerous stories and real-world examples to demonstrate how small things, like dressing better than your client or having a breakfast meeting, can lead to big results.
34. Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
To increase sales in a retail environment, you need to observe how your customers act. By understanding how shoppers move through a store and how they interact with merchandise, you can improve store design, product placement, and even signage.
Key concept: “Why not take the tools of the urban anthropologist and use them to study how people interact with the retail environment?” Underhill sends researchers into stores to track the movements of shoppers to find out how they interact with their surroundings.
35. The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
In a business world where customers demand more and are willing to pay more for experiences, companies need to shift their focus from goods and services to creating and delivering memorable experiences.
Key concept: “Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.” Pine and Gilmore use the birthday party as an example for how the economy has moved from commodities to goods and services to now experiences.
36. Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight with John Case
To succeed in business, you need to understand the rules, the principles, and the assumptions used in accounting.
Key concept: “Financial information is the nervous system of any business.” Berman and Knight use simple terms and straightforward language to explain accounting principles.
37. Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
Deming’s philosophy has shaped business for over sixty years. What is important are not statistics and numbers, but the people in the process.
Key concept: “Improvement of quality transfers waste of man-hours and of machine-time into the manufacture of good product and better service.” Deming’s 14 Points of Management cover a range of topics that provide the framework for continuous quality improvement.
38. Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
In 1949, the Japanese automotive industry was focused on how to produce a variety of products with limited resources. The Toyota Production System was developed to address this problem, using just-in-time and autonomation to eliminate waste.
Key concept: “Industrial society must develop the courage, or rather the common sense, to procure only what is needed when it is needed and in the amount needed.” Ohno’s system for shop floor coordination is based on the deceptively simple insight of the absolute elimination of waste.
39. Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
Reengineering turns traditional thinking about the division of labor on its head. By simplifying processes, you create a more dynamic work environment where generalists thrive and where the focus is on the customer.
Key concept: “‘Reengineering,’ properly, is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance…” Hammer and Champy advocate starting over with a blank sheet of paper, using existing complexities as indicators for where redesign can happen.
40. The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
The Goal is a story about turning around a failing business, using realistic, flesh-and-blood characters and fast-paced storytelling. It is a story about how to solve problems by looking at a process as a whole and finding the bottleneck that is preventing its maximum output.
Key concept: “Why can’t we consistently get a quality product out the door on time at the cost that can beat the competition?” Goldratt and Cox introduce the Theory of Constraints, which uses the metaphor of a hiking group to show how the weakest link limits the group’s success.
41. The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
Open-Book Management (OBM) is a management policy that is built on sharing all of the company’s financial data with all of the employees. To be successful, employees need to understand how their work affects the company and see a clear correlation between the health of the company and their own financial well being.
Key concept: “The best, most efficient, most profitable way to operate a business is to give everybody in the company a voice in saying how the company is run and a stake in the financial outcome, good or bad.” Stack’s approach is based on complete transparency with the company’s finances.
42. Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Execution, or the act of getting things done, is an essential component of business success. Bossidy and Charan describe the discipline of execution, its importance in leadership, and its role in corporate culture.
Key concept: “Execution is not only the biggest issue facing business today; it is something nobody has explained satisfactorily.” Bossidy and Charan describe how to link strategy and action, and how to motivate and engage employees.
43. What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
Business acumen, or the understanding of how a business operates, is an essential skill for any employee, regardless of their area of expertise. By learning the fundamentals of business, you can effectively participate in a wider conversation about your organization.
Key concept: “Use this book to learn the language of business. Then put the book aside and practice until the fundamentals of business become instinctive, as they are for the street vendor.” Charan describes the financial metrics most managers value, such as return on assets and cash flow. He also details a step-by-step method for project implementation.
44. A Business and Its Beliefs by Thomas J. Watson Jr.
Successful companies have a strong set of beliefs that underlie all of their policies and actions. These beliefs guide the organization’s behavior and interactions with its clients and society.
Key concept: “It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than it is to aim at imperfection and hit it.” Watson describes how his father learned humanistic management as a salesperson at the National Cash Register Company, under the leadership of John Patterson.
45. Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly
Don’t be afraid to face the big challenges, both personal and professional. By embracing life with courage and purpose, you can overcome any obstacle.
Key concept: “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live.” O’Kelly describes how he approached the challenge of dying in the same way that he approached business challenges: by making lists.
46. Titan by Ron Chernow
Rockefeller’s drive to create a global commodity and wealth-amassing enterprise started with his understanding of the big picture and his ability to reduce cost.
Key concept: “He embodied all [of American life’s] virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise. Yet as someone who flouted government and rode roughshod over competitors, he also personified many of its most egregious vices.” Chernow traces the evolution of Standard Oil from the company’s humble beginning to a global behemoth, and how the founder’s philanthropic work tempered his business practices.
47. My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
General Motors was the first company to develop a structured approach to managing a large organization. By creating a multi-divisional organizational structure, Sloan ensured critical savings, allowed for centralized purchasing, and reduced competition.
Key concept: “Confidence and caution formed my attitude in 1920. We could not control the environment, or predict its changes precisely, but we could seek the flexibility to survive fluctuations in business.” Sloan orchestrated debates within GM’s decision making committees to drive the company’s future.
48. Personal History by Katharine Graham
Katharine Graham, the first woman to run a company the size of the Washington Post Company, succeeded by maintaining a strict moral code while being open to change, and by trusting her own instincts.
Key concept: “I told [Phil Geyelin, a diplomatic reporter for the Wall Street Journal] something I have said to every editor I’ve worked with—that I didn’t want to read anything in the paper of great importance or that represented an abrupt change which we haven’t discussed; that I wanted to be in on the takeoffs as well as the landings.” Graham describes the challenges of leading a major company in a time of significant social and political change.
49. Sam Walton: Made in America—My Story by Sam Walton with John Huey
Sam Walton describes how his relentless pursuit of opportunity and commitment to small town values helped create the world’s largest retail company.
Key concept: “A lot of what goes on these days with high-flying companies and these overpaid CEO’s [sic], who’re really looting from the top and aren’t watching out for anyone but themselves, really upsets me.” Walton’s success came from focusing on small towns and markets and building a corporate culture where managers had real skin in the game.
50. Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson
Losing My Virginity is a story about survival, full of cautionary tales and lessons on how Branson created one of the world’s most recognizable companies by embracing his entrepreneurial spirit and never giving up on the next big thing.
Key concept: “But, unlike losing your virginity, in whatever world you make for yourself, you can keep embracing the new and the different over and over again.” Branson describes the early challenges of being dyslexic and how he found success by thinking differently.
51. Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
Selling is an essential part of life. To excel in sales, you need to understand the basic principles that drive the relationship between buyer and seller, and then use those principles to find success.
Key concept: “You don’t sell what the product is - you sell what the product does.” Ziglar provides practical, tried and true advice for salespeople on topics ranging from preparing for a presentation to overcoming fear of rejection.
Essential Questions
1. What are the essential principles that drive business success, and how can those principles be applied in a rapidly changing world?
The book’s central thesis is that there are universal, foundational principles of business, leadership, sales, marketing, and personal development that, when applied effectively, can lead to sustainable success. To achieve sustainable success, you need to focus on the most important things, and for any organization that is the customer. The book also addresses how business itself has changed in recent decades, and how the accelerated pace of change requires a different approach to managing our businesses and our lives.
2. How can business books be used to learn from the experiences of others, and what are some of the most important questions and challenges addressed by the books in this collection?
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time is a compilation of books that provide insights into the minds of successful businesspeople, leaders, and entrepreneurs. The book aims to provide readers with a filter for finding and understanding the best ideas from a wide array of sources. We divide our selections into twelve sections, each focusing on a specific aspect of business, and the books within those sections each address a fundamental question or challenge.
3. What makes a business book worth reading, and how can readers determine if a particular book is the right fit for their needs?
The authors argue that the best business books offer a clear promise, and that the reader can use several clues found in the book to determine if that promise aligns with their need. The review itself should clearly summarize the book’s content, providing a reader with an objective summary from which to make their decision.
4. How can different approaches to similar problems lead to better solutions, and how can business books inspire innovation and creative thinking?
Business books offer insight into how others approach business problems. These different approaches to common problems can inspire different ways of thinking and acting.
5. How can teamwork and collaboration be used to create a more effective and successful organization?
The book examines the increasing importance of teamwork in the modern business world, and how effective teams can be a key driver of success. To get the most from your team, and to create a dynamic, productive environment, you need to address the human side of the equation. The book provides practical guidance on developing relationships within a team, managing conflict, and building a culture that supports innovation.
Key Takeaways
1. To influence change, we need to embrace an epidemic mindset.
The Tipping Point, one of the more influential books of the 21st century, demonstrates that “ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” To increase the spread of an idea, product, or service, you need to leverage those individuals, the connectors and salespeople, who have influence over others. And to make your message memorable, you need to understand that even little changes can have big effects.
Practical Application:
In product management, to increase adoption, it is important to focus on the early adopters. Those early adopters will then influence the early majority, helping to ‘tip’ the product into the mainstream.
2. Focus is essential for achieving greatness.
Good to Great shows that companies that have long-term sustained success focus on doing one thing better than anyone else. By focusing on your company’s “hedgehog concept,” or the intersection of what you can be best at in the world, what drives your economic engine, and what you are deeply passionate about, you can create a clear path to success.
Practical Application:
When starting a new business, focus on one thing and do it better than anyone else.
3. Character is the foundation of success.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People demonstrates that to succeed in any endeavor, personal or professional, requires building character and vision, not just improving your personality, behavior, and attitude. It is through living those 7 Habits that one can achieve a lasting sense of effectiveness and build meaningful relationships.
Practical Application:
In sales, to increase your effectiveness, focus on building relationships and trust.
4. Values drive sustainable success.
A Business and Its Beliefs demonstrates that to be successful, organizations need to have a sound set of beliefs that underlie all policies and actions.
Practical Application:
When developing a new AI product or service, it is important to understand and address the ethical considerations. By making ethical decision making an integral part of your development process, you create a more sustainable and valuable product.
5. Any process can be improved by reducing waste.
The Toyota Production System is about far more than just manufacturing cars. It is a philosophy that can be applied to any process for the purpose of maximizing efficiency. The key to understanding TPS is recognizing and eliminating waste.
Practical Application:
By breaking down tasks into smaller sub-components, and by using tools such as Kanban and Just-in-Time manufacturing, the process for developing an AI application will become more efficient and less prone to errors.
Suggested Deep Dive
Chapter: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
This book offers valuable insights into the nature of disruptive innovation and how companies can leverage those innovations to create new markets and opportunities. These concepts are particularly relevant in the world of artificial intelligence as many believe we are in the early stages of a technological revolution with AI.
Memorable Quotes
Flow. 18
Flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
Up the Organization. 46
Reorganizing: Should be undergone about as often as major surgery. And should be as well planned and as swiftly executed.
Chasing Daylight. 62
The business of dying is hard. The wrapping up. The paperwork, the legal work. The stuff that’s boring and maddening about life when life is going well. Of course, the other stuff that’s happening when dying—the physical stuff and the huge emotional stuff—can be unspeakably awful. But if paperwork is enough to break your spirit—and it is—then how can you have anything left?
In Search of Excellence. 109
“In observing the excellent companies, and specifically the way they interact with customers, what we found most striking was the consistent presence of obsession. This characteristically occurred as a seemingly unjustifiable overcommitment to some form of quality, reliability, or service.”
Secrets of Closing the Sale. 165
“The prospect is persuaded more by the depth of your conviction than he is by the height of your logic.”
Comparative Analysis
While similar in scope and intent to other “best of” compilations, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time distinguishes itself by focusing on those books whose ideas are still applicable in today’s rapidly changing world. This focus allows the books to stand apart from others, which often fall prey to the faddish nature of the business-book genre. We also chose a contemporary, conversational style, much like the one found in the books we recommend, a style we believe increases a book’s accessibility and enjoyability. This approach is in line with the one used by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in In Search of Excellence, but where Peters and Waterman were writing as journalists recounting the tales of executives, we act as translators, using a more pedagogical approach to condense a book’s core message. Also, unlike Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point and other recent best sellers, we specifically avoided topics and theories outside the realm of business practices.
Reflection
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time is a timely and relevant book for the modern business person. It provides a roadmap for navigating the ever-changing world of business by highlighting books whose ideas are timeless. But it is also important to acknowledge that the business world has changed dramatically since many of these books were written, and that some of the specific advice and examples presented might not be as applicable in today’s world. For example, the rise of the Internet and social media has had a profound impact on the way businesses operate, and many of the books included in this collection were written before these technologies became commonplace. However, the book’s focus on the human element of business, and how our emotions and motivations drive success, will continue to be relevant, regardless of the specific challenges we face.
Flashcards
What is the ultimate measure of a knowledge worker?
Effectiveness
What is flow?
A state of effortless concentration when time flies and we find we have accomplished a great deal
What are Kouzes and Posner’s five practices of exemplary leadership?
Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
What is positioning?
The process of getting your product into the minds of your customers.
What should all adjacencies build and reinforce?
A company’s core business.
What are the six principles of sticky ideas?
Simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and stories.
What is a lean startup?
A new product development process that measures its progress through validated learning.
What is the halo effect?
The tendency to evaluate a company based on its recent performance, rather than on its long-term potential.
What are the three components of Doug Hall’s ‘Marketing Physics’?
Overt Benefit, Real Reason to Believe, and Dramatic Difference.
What is the core principle at the heart of the Toyota Production System?
Waste