We've ranked the best mba books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
You can go after the job you want—and get it! You can take the job you have—and improve it! You can take any situation—and make it work for you!
Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you:
-Six ways to make people like you -Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking -Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment
And much more! Achieve your maximum potential—a must-read for the twenty-first century with more than 15 million copies sold!
…
Recommended by Dave Ramsey, Daymond John, Dustin Moskovitz, and 58 others.
When Stephen Covey first released The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book became an instant rage because people suddenly got up and took notice that their lives were headed off in the wrong direction; and more than that, they realized that there were so many simple things they could do in order to navigate their life correctly. This book was wonderful education for people, education in how to live life effectively and get closer to the ideal of being a ‘success’ in life.
But not everyone understands Stephen Covey’s model fully well, or maybe there are some people who haven’t read it yet. This is definitely true because we still see so much failure all around us. Now, I am not saying that by using Covey’s model, or anyone else’s model for that matter, you can become a sure-shot success, but at least we should have seen many more successes around us already judging by the number of copies the book has sold! So, where is the shortcoming?
There are two main problems here, and we are talking only about the people who have read the book already. The first problem is that most people are too lazy to implement the ideals of Stephen Covey in their lives. They consider his masterpiece of a book as a mere coffee-table book or a book that you use for light reading when you are traveling and then forget all about it. They do not realize that this book contains life-changing information. Or, they take the information and do not make the effort to actually utilize it so that it becomes knowledge for them.
The second problem is that a lot of people have a myopic view of Covey’s ideals. These are people who are impressed by the book already. If you ask them what the seven habits are, they can rattle them off end to end, but then they miss the larger picture. They do not understand that Covey was trying to tell more than he wrote in words. There are hidden implications in this book, yes, and a lot of people have just failed to see through them.
That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to show you how Covey’s book, or rather, his model, was a complete model in itself. There was nothing amiss about it. If you implement it, there should be no aspect of your life that should go untouched. The only thing is that you have to understand these ideals and try to implement them in your life.
But, before we barge into that area, it is extremely important to understand what these ideals are. What was the model that was propounded by Stephen Covey in his mega-famous book? We shall begin by trying to understand his model first, and then interpret it in such a way that it pertains to every aspect of our life
Dave Ramsey recommended this book on his website. [source]
Dustin Moskovitz
Co-founder/Facebook and Asana
I was surprised at how familiar the topics felt. [source]
Joe Martin
@benmorris @audible_com @Gladwell I enjoy the quiet on the way home, but on the way to work I am listening to the 7 habits book by Stephen Coveru, a fave of mine [source]
Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.
The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
"Collins briefed Amazon executives on his seminal management book before its publication. Companies must confront the brutal facts of their business, find out what they are uniquely good at, and master their fly wheel, in which each part of the business reinforces and accelerates the other parts," Stone writes. [source]
Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
A few months ago, Mr. Obama read “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, about how people make decisions — quick, instinctive thinking versus slower, contemplative deliberation. For Mr. Obama, a deliberator in an instinctive business, this may be as instructive as any political science text. [source]
Captivating dive into human decision making, marred by inclusion of several/many? psychology studies that fail to replicate. Will stand as a cautionary tale? [source]
Cover unavailable
6
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from the author's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business. [source]
Cover unavailable
7
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.
Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.
Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.
Written in a fast-paced thriller style, 'The Goal' contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints developed by the author.
Recommended by Jeff Bezos, Danielle Morrill, Kevin Systrom, and 4 others.
Encourages companies to identify the biggest constraints in their operations and then structure their organizations to get the most out of those constraints. [source]
Kevin Systrom
About basically manufacturing and supply chain management. It sounds really boring, but I promise you it’s really good. [source]
Chris Goward
Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: … The Goal. [source]
Cover unavailable
9
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.
His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—now updated with a fresh new package—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Read this international bestseller to avoid a similar fate.
Clay Christensen—who authored the award-winning Harvard Business Review article “How Will You Measure Your Life?”—explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says a successful company with established products WILL get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.
Sharp, cogent, provocative, and one of the most influential business books of all time—The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager or entrepreneur should be without. Add this newly released edition to your library.
Brad Stone's new book, The Everything Store, describes how Bezos developed this strategy after reading another book called The Innovator's Dilemma by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. [source]
It's important that we make this transformation, because of what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma," where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it, and we certainly don't want to be left behind. [source]
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
About how businesses get disrupted, and a lot of those themes are why startups can succeed and thrive even when there are big competitors who you would think would just wipe ’em out. [source]
Cover unavailable
10
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
More than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week. How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent mini-retirements The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek includes: More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either"
Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter. [source]
Tim Draper
Founder/Draper Fisher Jurvetson
With this kind of time management and focus on the important things in life, people should be able to get 15 times as much done in a normal work week. [source]
It's about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge. [source]
This amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive book synthesizes the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz with the historical legacies of statesmen, warriors, seducers, and con men throughout the ages.
These are the books I recommend people to listen to on @applebooks. [source]
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
There is no living writer (or person) who has been more influential to me than Robert Greene. I met him when I was 19 years old and he’s shaped me as a person, as a writer, as a thinker. You MUST read his books. His work on power and strategy are critical for anyone trying to accomplish anything. In life, power is force we are constantly bumping up against. People have power of over us, we seek power ourselves that we might be free enough and influential enough to accomplish our goals—so we must understand where power comes from, how it works and how to get it. But pure power is meaningless. It must be joined to mastery and purpose. So read his book Mastery so that you can figure your life’s task and how to dedicate yourself to it. [source]
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Gladwell is not the first person to come up with the 10,000 hour rule. Nor is he the first person to document what it takes to become the best in the world at something. But his stories are so great as he explains these deep concepts. How did the Beatles become the best? Why are professional hockey players born in January, February and March? And so on. [source]
Alex Circei
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life by Richard Branson Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki [source]
Master the fundamentals, hone your business instincts, and save a fortune in tuition.
The consensus is clear: MBA programs are a waste of time and money. Even the elite schools offer outdated assembly-line educations about profit-and-loss statements and PowerPoint presentations. After two years poring over sanitized case studies, students are shuffled off into middle management to find out how business really works.
Josh Kaufman has made a business out of distilling the core principles of business and delivering them quickly and concisely to people at all stages of their careers. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. In The Personal MBA, he shares the essentials of sales, marketing, negotiation, strategy, and much more.
True leaders aren't made by business schools-they make themselves, seeking out the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to succeed. Read this book and in one week you will learn the principles it takes most people a lifetime to master.
…
Recommended by Brian Burkhart, Ola Olusoga, and 1 others.
Brian Burkhart
It’s jam-packed with little digestible bites of wisdom—from finance to marketing to organizational development. It’s the guru bible of business. [source]
Ola Olusoga
For business, I've read Influence by Robert Cialdini 3 times, and Traction by Gabriel Weinberg twice, so if number of times read indicates favor, then those are it. There are a whole bunch of others, like The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, Confession of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy, The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, and Running Lean by Ash Maurya, that I've also enjoyed and recommend to people. [source]
Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Michael Lewis mines all these possibilities - his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission - but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers - numbers! - collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, layers, and physics professors.
What these geek numbers show - no, prove - is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base on balls. The information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics.
Billy paid attention to those numbers - with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal, he had to - and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win... how can we not cheer for David?
You would think that the relationship between training and skill would be utterly obvious in sports, but apparently it isn’t. [source]
Daniel Hamermesh
What the book is really about is a guy who is using some econometrics to predict which players will do better in advancing wins, which is a remarkable use of economic thinking. [source]
David Papineau
It’s a parable of the disinclination of people in general to base their practices on evidence, a parable for evidence-based policy in general. [source]
Cover unavailable
15
Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant
Winning by not competing! This international best seller upends traditional thinking with principles and tools to make the competition irrelevant. In an audiobook that challenges everything you thought you knew, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne assert that tomorrow's leading companies will succeed, not by battling their rivals for market share in the bloody "red ocean" of a shrinking profit pool, but by creating "blue oceans" of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Based on a study of 150 strategic moves, spanning more than 100 years and 30 industries, they provide a systematic approach that every company can use to render rivals obsolete and unleash new demand:
Reconstruct market boundaries Focus on the big picture Reach beyond existing demand Get the strategic sequence right Overcome organizational hurdles Build execution into strategy
Recommended by Daymond John, Steve Blank, Danielle Morrill, and 13 others.
Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
There are the normal ones that everybody loves. There would be "Rich Dad Poor Dad," "Who Moved My Cheese?;" I love all the Dale Carnegie books; "The One Minute Manager." I love newer ones like "Blue Ocean Strategy" and all the "Freaknomics" books. [source]
I don’t remember who originally told me to read Blue Ocean Strategy but I’m glad they did because this simple recommendation would substantially shape the course of my life and my career. [source]
Ayush Kumar
One doesn't necessarily need to take from others to fill their glass & you can always build a successful business in any industry. [source]
Cover unavailable
16
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to improve your idea's chances--essential reading in the "fake news" era.
Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.
Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
@conorgil My all-time favorite example of research communication is The Selfish Gene. Astonishingly effective at explaining deep research ideas/findings to a lay reader. A book with great advice: https://t.co/QD1sM2o0z6 (It isn't specific to research but still super valuable.) [source]
Bill Liao
The Book "Made to Stick" combined with "The Poetics" by Aristotle really helped me to see the power of telling great stories with surprises in them and every time I meet a start-up I can always make a contribution to their pitch. [source]
Cristian-Dragos Baciu
I highly recommend all the books written by the Heath brothers, especially Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die. This one's a must-read for marketers. The reason I enjoyed their work so much is because they offer real-life stories and insights that makes it so much easier for the reader to imprint that information in his mind [source]
A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations—whether in the boardroom or at home.
After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues to succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles—counter-intuitive tactics and strategies—you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car; negotiating a salary; buying a home; renegotiating rent; deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.
Emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence without sacrificing deal-making power. From the pen of a former hostage negotiator—someone who couldn’t take no for an answer—which makes it fascinating reading. But it’s also eminently practical. In these pages, you will find the techniques for getting the deal you want. [source]
This book blew my mind. It’s a riveting read, full of instantly actionable advice—not just for high-stakes negotiations, but also for handling everyday conflicts at work and at home. [source]
Cover unavailable
18
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in
The key text on problem-solving negotiation-updated and revised
Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution.
Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. Thoroughly updated and revised, it offers readers a straight- forward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry-or getting taken.
…
Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Drew Houston, Dustin Moskovitz, and 8 others.
"The Bible of business and personal productivity" —Lifehack
"A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company
Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.
Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
…
Recommended by David Allen, Dustin Moskovitz, Ev Williams, and 19 others.
Getting Things Done by David Allen. He recently spoke at our Zappos all-hands meeting and gave me a signed copy of his book. [source]
Eric Rose
Chairman/Columbia University Department of Surgery
When I'm flat-out stressed about the volume and complexity of my work, I open this book and find immediate ways to gain a sense of control. That's really a critical need for decision making. David made me what I am today: headstrong and proud of it. [source]
In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.
But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.
Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.
This memoir, by the co-founder of Nike, is a refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like: messy, precarious, and riddled with mistakes. I’ve met Knight a few times over the years. He’s super nice, but he’s also quiet and difficult to get to know. Here Knight opens up in a way few CEOs are willing to do. I don’t think Knight sets out to teach the reader anything. Instead, he accomplishes something better. He tells his story as honestly as he can. It’s an amazing tale. [source]
I've known Phil Knight since I was a kid, but I didn't really know him until I opened this beautiful, startling, intimate book. And the same goes for Nike. I've worn the gear with pride, but I didn't realize the remarkable saga of innovation and survival and triumph that stood behind every swoosh. Candid, funny, suspenseful, literary - this is a memoir for people who love sport, but above all it's a memoir for people who love memoirs. [source]
Cover unavailable
21
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing
The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.
To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline. [source]
The foundation for investing. A lot of people have used this as their guide to getting into investment, basic strategies. Actually Warren Buffett cites this as the book that got him into investing and he says that principles he learned here helped him to become a great investor. Highly recommend this book. It’s a great way understand what’s going on and how to evaluate different companies out there before you make an investment. [source]
DJ Vlad
The single biggest influence on how I buy and sell stocks. [source]
Cover unavailable
22
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.
In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.
His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including
demoting (or firing) a loyal friend; whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them; if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company; how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you; what to do when smart people are bad employees; why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one; whether you should sell your company, and how to do it. Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.
Ben's book is a great read - with uncomfortable truths about entrepreneurship and how to lead to a company. It's also an inspiring story of a business rebirth through sheer willpower. [source]
Ben's experience and expertise make him one of the most important leaders not just in Silicon Valley but also in the global knowledge economy. For anyone interested in building, growing or leading a great company, this book is an incredibly valuable resource - and a funny and insightful read. [source]
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
One of the great things that the author wrote in this book is the hardest part of being a CEO is managing your psychology. [source]
Cover unavailable
23
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.
Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take—from neither the left nor the right—on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years.
Nudge is a very important book. One of the reasons Nudge is so important is because it’s taking these ideas and applying them to the policy domain. Here are the mistakes we make. Here are the ways marketers are trying to influence us. Here’s the way we might be able to fight back. If policymakers understood these principles, what could they do? The other important thing about the book is that it describes, in detail, small interventions. It’s basically a book about cheap persuasion. [source]
This might feel like a weird book to include, but I think it presents another side of strategy that is too often forgotten. It’s not always about bold actors and strategic thrusts. Sometimes strategy is about subtle influence. Sometimes it is framing and small tweaks that change behavior. We can have big aims, but get there with little moves. This book has excellent examples of that kind of thinking and how it is changing politics, government and business. My favorite example is about the bumblebee that they started putting on urinals–which drastically reduced the amount of spray and spillage because it changed where men aimed when they peed. It’s not exactly the coolest strategy but it solved a problem. So we can learn from it. [source]
Now updated with new research — the book that has changed millions of lives.
After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset — those who believe that abilities are fixed — are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset — those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.
In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love — to transform their lives and your own.
One of the reasons I loved Mindset is because it’s solutions-oriented. In the book’s final chapter, Dweck describes the workshop she and her colleagues have developed to shift students from a fixed to a growth mindset. These workshops demonstrate that ‘just learning about the growth mindset can cause a big shift in the way people think about themselves and their lives. [source]
Without exaggeration, I’ve never met a CEO who didn’t have Mindset on their bookshelf. It resonates with people who have become successful because the belief that your abilities can grow is foundational to their achievements. [source]
Cover unavailable
25
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail, and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.
Bunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. [source]
Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. [source]
Andy Stern
I think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then having massive impact. The Tipping Point, to me, is really an appreciation that very small things can rearrange thinking in ways – like infectious diseases – that have huge implications. While we're always searching for the big policy changes – and we think we have to do that in very traditional ways of building coalitions against constituencies, movements and the media – sometimes it's the little things that actually tip the situation. Like the story of a person and their unique set of circumstances that really captures an issue about health care or housing. So it's trying to remember, while you're thinking about the grand and the glorious, that thinking about the small things can equally bring about change. [source]
The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.
Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.
Michael Lewis's ability to boil down the most complicated subjects is like a magic trick. You can't believe your own eyes. He takes on important issues - from the 2008 Wall Street crash in "The Big Short" to parenting in "Home Game" - and breaks them down to the deepest truths. His combination of an extraordinarily analytical mind and a deep understanding of human nature allows him to weave together data and events to offer a fresh and insightful narrative. Whatever the topic, the result is always compelling and even thrilling. I am in awe of him. [source]
The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies‚neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.
First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from homeland security to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
Atul is really talking about how absolutely powerful checklists are, and I think he makes a very creative point: that checklist are not just some static, boring thing. They actually allow you to do excellent work and free up your brain by not having to keep remembering what you need to do when. That then allows your brain to be a lot more creative about whatever it is you’re doing. [source]
The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
…
Recommended by Tobi Lütke, Bogdan Lucaciu, David Brudo, and 5 others.
Tobi Lütke
Founder & CEO/Shopify
Tobi Lütke recommended this book in an interview in "The Globe and Mail." [source]
Bogdan Lucaciu
Spoiler: it’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose. [source]
One of the most popular personal development and self-improvement books of all time, Think and Grow Rich has sold over 100 million copies worldwide since its first publication during the Great Depression. In this hardcover edition, Napoleon Hill presents a "Philosophy of Achievement" in 13 principles drawn from the success stories of such greats as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and other millionaires of his time.
Think and Grow Rich reveals the secrets that can bring you fortune. By suppressing negative thoughts and keeping your focus on the long term, you can find true and lasting success. Napoleon Hill details his philosophy through the following 13 principles:
Desire Faith Autosuggestion Specialized Knowledge Imagination Organized Planning Decision Persistence Power of the Master Mind The Mystery of Sex Transmutation The Subconscious Mind The Brain The Sixth Sense Follow the steps outlined here, and you may just find the path to your own personal fortune.
For anyone interested in my career path, I’d recommend books in various genres. On a real practical level, I’d certainly recommend reading any and all plant/mushroom/tree/ecology/nature books you can acquire. It’s even more helpful to read the books that pertain specifically to your ecosystem and bioregion. Additionally, I’d also recommend reading a plethora of business and marketing books — both old and new alike. Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, and anything by Seth Godin would be my top recommendations. And of course, every book I mentioned in the previous answers are strongly recommended as well. [source]
Alan Pierce
This book dramatically changed the way I structured my day to day life. Based on over two decades of personal interviews and studies of some of history's’ greatest minds, the author distills the lessons he learned and details how you can train and condition your mind through daily habit to master your actions. The way it promotes a disciplined and holistic approach of continual self-improvement, goal setting and strategic decision making really resonated with me. [source]
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.
In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.
Here is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.
I found it to be truly extraordinary. Every page is full of so many principles of distinction and insights—and I love how Ray incorporates his history and his life in such an elegant way. [source]
Cover unavailable
31
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.
Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. (front flap)
…
Recommended by Malcolm Gladwell, Daymond John, Ev Williams, and 12 others.
Give and Take highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common.
For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.
Using his own pioneering research as Wharton's youngest tenured professor, Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries. Combining cutting-edge evidence with captivating stories, this landmark book shows how one of America's best networkers developed his connections, why the creative genius behind one of the most popular shows in television history toiled for years in anonymity, how a basketball executive responsible for multiple draft busts transformed his franchise into a winner, and how we could have anticipated Enron's demise four years before the company collapsed - without ever looking at a single number.
Praised by bestselling authors such as Dan Pink, Tony Hsieh, Dan Ariely, Susan Cain, Dan Gilbert, Gretchen Rubin, Bob Sutton, David Allen, Robert Cialdini, and Seth Godin-as well as senior leaders from Google, McKinsey, Merck, Estee Lauder, Nike, and NASA - Give and Take highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common. This landmark book opens up an approach to success that has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organizations and communities.
For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture-a lucid epigrammatic text that reveals as much about human psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-tzu's text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable insight in these ancient words. In his crisp, accessible new translation, scholar John Minford brings this seminal work to life for modern readers.
Minford opens with a lively, learned introduction in which he explores the life and times of Sun-tzu, looks at The Art of War in the context of the turbulent Warring States period, and discusses how best to read and understand the work today. There follows Minford's translation of the core text itself in two different formats-first, the unadorned thirteen chapters of the original work and then the same text reprinted with extensive running commentary by classical Chinese scholars as well as Minford himself. The result is an opportunity for Western readers to experience Sun-tzu's work in all its intensity as it applies to many aspects of our lives.
Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Art of War (Sun Tsu) to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]
Cover unavailable
34
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.
For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.
A bunch of my friends recommended this one to me. Carreyrou gives you the definitive insider’s look at the rise and fall of Theranos. The story is even crazier than I expected, and I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: elaborate scams, corporate intrigue, magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the demise of a company once valued at nearly $10 billion. [source]
Finished “bad blood” on the Theranos scandal. Wow. Just wow. It’s a must read for everyone in tech and startups. Just 1-click buy it :) Amazing how far charisma and social proof got them. Here’s the NYT review of the book https://t.co/PyMGxfoG2R [source]
Brad Feld
Co-Founder/Foundry Group
Every entrepreneur and VC should read this book. John Carreyrou has done something important here. Maybe this book will finally put a nail in the phrase “fake it till you make it”, but I doubt it. The amount of lying, disingenuousness, blatant and unjustified self-promotion, and downright deceit that exists in entrepreneurship right now is at a local maximum. This always happens when entrepreneurship gets trendy. Carreyrou just wrote a long warning for entrepreneurs and VCs. [source]
Cover unavailable
35
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.
Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.
An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.
What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.
They succeeded by transforming habits.
In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.
Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.
Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
…
Recommended by Naval Ravikant, Blake Irving, Alden Mills, and 15 others.
I also recently finished The Power of Habit, or close to finish as I get. That one was interesting, not because of its content necessarily, but because it’s good for me to always keep on top of mind how powerful my habits are. … I think learning how to break habits is a very important meta-skill that can serve you better in life than almost anything else. Although you can read tons of books on it, the reality is you’re never going to learn how to break bad habits until you just break them. [source]
Blake Irving
CEO/GoDaddy
You know, there's a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Simple read book about just how to build positive habits that can be I think I what I'd call you know whether in your personal life or whether in your business life to help you build you know, have a loop that can build your success and that's one I mean there are so many great books out there. [source]
Alden Mills
More recent books that have had a significant impact on me are The Power of Habit and The Diamond Cutter. Both represent different forces for me – the former helps me tactically with making incremental improvements in my life. [source]
Cover unavailable
36
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.
The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities.
We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory.
The Black Swan is a landmark book – itself a black swan.
The book also contains a 4-page glossary; 19 pages of notes; and, a 28-page bibliography in addition to an index.
From the book "The Everything Store: and the Age of Amazon" “The scholar argues that people are wired to see patterns in chaos while remaining blind to unpredictable events, with massive consequences. Experimentation and empiricism trumps the easy and obvious narrative,” Stone writes. [source]
And throw in “The Black Swan” and “Fooled by Randomness”. “Fragile” means if you hit something might break. “Resilient” means if you hit something, it will stay the same. On my podcast Nassim discusses “Antifragility” – building a system, even on that works for you on a personal level, where you if you harm your self in some way it becomes stronger. That podcast changed my life He discusses Antifragility throughout history, up to our current economic situation, and even in our personal situations. [source]
Cover unavailable
37
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.
Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.
Learn how to: * make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy); * overcome a lack of motivation and willpower; * design your environment to make success easier; * get back on track when you fall off course; ...and much more.
Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.
I recently read an advance copy of James Clear’s new book, Atomic Habits. His thesis is that small but carefully selected habits can, over time, create massively positive results — not just in terms of what you accomplish, but also in terms of the type of person you become. James’s exposition rings true with what’ve I learned hanging around interesting people and high achievers. I recommend you give this book a closer look. [source]
A lot of people email me asking about habits - how to form good ones, how to break bad ones, how to stop doing the dumb shit we always do. I've got a friend named James Clear. He's an accomplished author and business owner and is kind of a "habit guru." He's probably forgotten more habits research than I've ever brought myself to look at. He just launched his first book. It's called Atomic Habits and it's probably the most practical and complete guide I've ever seen about habit formation and habit change. Do check it out. And then email him and tell him that I have luscious and beautiful hair and he doesn't. Then stick out your tongue and go, "Nyah, nyanya, nyah, nyah." [source]
Who Moved My Cheese? is a simple parable that reveals profound truths. It is an amusing and enlightening story of four characters who live in a "Maze" and look for "Cheese" to nourish them and make them happy.
Two are mice named Sniff and Scurry. And two are "Littlepeople"—beings the size of mice who look and act a lot like people. Their names are Hem and Haw.
"Cheese" is a metaphor for what you want to have in life—whether it is a good job, a loving relationship, money, a possession, health, or spiritual peace of mind.
And the "Maze" is where you look for what you want—the organization you work in, or the family or community you live in.
In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change. Eventually, one of them deals with it successfully, and writes what he has learned from his experience on the Maze walls.
When you come to see "The Handwriting on the Wall," you can discover for yourself how to deal with change, so that you can enjoy less stress and more success (however you define it) in your work and in your life.
Written for all ages, the story takes less than an hour to read, but its unique insights can last a lifetime.
…
Recommended by Dave Ramsey, Daymond John, Darren Chua, and 5 others.
Dave Ramsey recommended this book on his website. [source]
Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]
Darren Chua
When asked what books he'd recommend to young people interested in the same career path, mentioned Who Moved My Cheese. [source]
Cover unavailable
39
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Doris Kearns Goodwin
4.4
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.
Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.
It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.
We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. --front flap
The Oval office can be a lonely place, so reading about your forefather’s experience could only help. “The biographies have been useful, because I do think that there’s a tendency, understandable, to think that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” said President Obama in an interview. [source]
I loved Team of Rivals, and Leadership really built on the things I had taken away from that book. Moving from basketball to building a company, I needed to learn new and different leadership skills, and Goodwin outlines the different skill-sets of Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and Lyndon Johnson, accessibly. [source]
Cover unavailable
40
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.
In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way—and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit—those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?
Starting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire. And the people who follow them don't do so because they have to; they follow because they want to.
Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.
Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]
The basis of this book is so important to anyone looking to increase their influence, profits or impact. People won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. When you start with the why, everything else falls into place. This book is so impactful, I consider it required reading. [source]
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
Over the years he’s recommended well over 20 business books — including his own, the 2010 bestseller Delivering Happiness and you can always find what he’s currently reading atop his cluttered desk. Start with Why is amogst those titles. [source]
Cover unavailable
41
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High is a guide to hone your conversation skills, and prepare you for the most important or trying times of your life and career. The book discusses how talking in the right way can help people achieve what they want. People are often tongue-tied when it comes to interacting with someone, especially when there is a lot of tension in the air. Strong emotions often give away the ability to rationalise one's thoughts, especially during conversations, and emotionally-driven conversations will not work on important occasions. This book teaches readers how to tackle such situations with ease. It provides tips on how to be persuasive, and turn a conversation to one's advantage. The book helps in dealing with confrontations at home, at work, and even with friends. These skills can positively impact the lives of the book's readers in all spheres, and direct their thoughts in a constructive manner. Some of the sections from the book are, How to Notice When Safety Is at Risk, How to Speak Persuasively Not Abrasively, How to Turn Crucial Conversations, and How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want.Kerry Patterson, the co-founder of VitalSmarts, has authored four bestsellers. Some of his other books are Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior. Joseph Grenny works as a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies and has impacted many lives throughout the globe through his corporate change initiatives. He is the co-founder of VitalSmarts, and a popular speaker too. Al Switzler is the author of four New York Times bestsellers and has designed and framed many programs for Fortune 500 companies. Ron McMillan has worked as a leadership consultant and trained many people, from first level managers to CEOs.
…
Recommended by Max Levchin and Deke Bridges.
Max Levchin
Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor
A now-venerable guide to having tough conversations in a way that engages the debaters. [source]
Deke Bridges
Picked up this great book @Powells to read. Better conversation and listening enables you to get deeper into subjects at hand. When talking with people, this makes your communication skills a very powerful tool. Always be learning. #growth #education #leadership https://t.co/r0ujX9IPqh [source]
Cover unavailable
42
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.
Leaders needn’t be the loudest. Leadership is not about theater. It’s not about dominance. It is about putting the lives of others before any other priority. In Quiet, Cain affirms to a good many of us who are introverts by nature that we needn’t try to be extroverts if we want to lead. Simply being ourselves is more important — and more effective. [source]
Danielle Morrill
Co-founder/Mattermark
Anyway, maybe you’re like me and figuring this out for yourself. It’s a good book for introverts and for those who love them [source]
Probably half the world is introverts. Maybe more. It’s not an easy life to live. I sometimes have that feeling in a room full of people, “uh-oh. I just shut down. I can’t talk anymore and there’s a lock on my mouth and this crowd threw away the key.” Do you ever get that feeling? Please? I hope you do. Let’s try to lock eyes at the party. “Quiet” shows the reader how to unlock the secret powers that probably half the world needs to unlock. [source]
Cover unavailable
43
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
E-Myth \ 'e-,'mith\ n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work
Voted #1 business book by Inc. 500 CEOs.
An instant classic, this revised and updated edition of the phenomenal bestseller dispels the myths about starting your own business. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber, with sharp insight gained from years of experience, points out how common assumptions, expectations, and even technical expertise can get in the way of running a successful business.
Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.
The E-Myth Revisited will help you grow your business in a productive, assured way.
After reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch, I decided that extreme questions were the forcing function I needed. [source]
Brian Scudamore
Founder & CEO/1-800-GOT-JUNK?
The book that’s had the biggest impact on me is The E-Myth by Michael Gerber (I even wrote about it in my own book). I read it front to back, then reread it right away. Gerber takes you through every step of a running a business from start to finish, and shows you what you need to make it successful. I read it when I was looking to take 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to the next level, and I had an epiphany: people don’t fail, systems do. Reading his book got me to take a good, hard look at my business and focus on developing our systems and hiring happy people. His book is one of the reasons we were able to sell out of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchises and scale that success into three other home-service companies, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, You Move Me, and Shack Shine under the O2E Brands banner. [source]
Cover unavailable
44
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
”It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different.” — John Templeton
What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise. Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.
In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.
Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these "outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.
Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.
In his 2012 shareholder letter, Buffett praises The Outsiders as "an outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation." Berkshire Hathaway plays a major role in the book. One chapter is on director Tom Murphy, who Buffett says is "overall the best business manager I've ever met." [source]
Thorndike explores the importance of thoughtful capital allocation through the stories of eight successful CEOs. A good read for any business leader but especially those willing to chart their own course [source]
Austen Allred
This is the best book on being a CEO I’ve ever read https://t.co/snoEVOqJGk https://t.co/GUsZNlnlpn [source]
Cover unavailable
45
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
…
Recommended by AnneMarie Schindler, Holger Seim, Jennifer Rock, and 3 others.
AnneMarie Schindler
I suggest these books because they really open up 'how' you think about life and in turn work, success/challenges/setbacks, and in general, yourself. I believe that the more you can understand yourself and broaden your approach to work, the easier it will be to find work that energizes you. Finally, I'm a team player at heart, and love working with others to achieve a huge goal so a portion of these deal with team composition and performance too. [source]
Holger Seim
Lencioni’s books helped me to shift my focus from individual performance to team performance, and what it takes to make a team perform well. It helped me to realize and take seriously the fact that great team performance doesn’t happen magically but needs conscious effort. When I discovered The Five Dysfunctions of a Team for the first time, we had a dysfunctional team at Blinkist and the book opened my eyes to see the problem clearly and showed clear steps for how they should be tackled. Beforehand I was aware that we had a problem, but I couldn’t pinpoint it specifically and hence, couldn’t solve it easily. This book helped a lot. [source]
Jennifer Rock
In Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the executive asks her senior leaders "Who is your first team?" And they each answer incorrectly that it's the team that reports to him or her. The point is that you need to shift your perspective to understanding your senior leadership peers are your first team. We read that book as a leadership team in a corporation where I worked -- and the environment was very competitive between us. When we agreed that our cross-functional leadership team was our first team, we became more cooperative, innovative and productive. And we vastly boosted our results. [source]
In his book, Smith fervently extolled the simple yet enlightened notion that individuals are fully capable of setting and regulating prices for their own goods and services. He argued passionately in favor of free trade, yet stood up for the little guy. The Wealth of Nations provided the first--and still the most eloquent--integrated description of the workings of a market economy.
Obama, unsurprisingly, appears to be more drawn to stories sympathetic to the working classes than is McCain. Obama cites John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle,” about a labor dispute; Robert Caro’s “Power Broker,” about Robert Moses; and Studs Terkel’s “Working.” But he also includes Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and “Theory of Moral Sentiments” on his list. [source]
Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Wealth of Nations (Smith) to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]
Cover unavailable
47
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth--and how it can help any organization thrive.
In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress -- to measure what mattered.
Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.
In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization.
The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention.
In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.
John explains how OKRs Objectives and Key Results work and shows how you can apply them in all sorts of situations. I’d recommend John’s book for anyone interested in becoming a better manager (and I’d say that even if I hadn’t been interviewed for a super-nice chapter about the Gates Foundation). [source]
Whether you're a seasoned CEO or a first-time entrepreneur, you'll find valuable lessons, tools, and inspiration in the pages of Measure What Matters. I'm glad John invested the time to share these ideas with the world. [source]
In this indispensable book, the most important venture capitalist of our era reveals a key to business innovation and success. This crisp and colorful book combines fascinating case studies with insightful personal stories to show how OKRs can add magic to organizations of any size. [source]
This hardcover edition is cleanly formatted for easy reading. 12 point Garamond, 1.25 spacing. The Richest Man in Babylon is a timeless classic, revealing the secrets to making money and keeping it. This inspirational book is hailed as the greatest of books on finances. It unveils the secrets to wealth, providing priceless suggestions, advice, unforgettable parables, financial problem-solving tools, and invaluable information which will get you on your way to riches. The book to read for all who want financial success.
…
Recommended by Daymond John, Aisha Yesufu, DJ Vlad, and 6 others.
Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]
Aisha Yesufu
@seundavidpaul 👏👏👏👏👏 This is a great book [source]
This is a 1920s classic version of How To Get Rich. The ancestor of all the pale imitations, like Rich Dad/Poor Dad, that came since. And while I scoffed at plenty of the allegories from ancient Babylon that presents the lessons, it was still a neat package. And at least ancient Babylon is a more interesting backdrop for teaching lessons about money than some suburban house flipper. I ended up liking it more at the end than I did at the beginning. It’s also a really interesting tie-in with that debt history book. [source]
Cover unavailable
49
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World
The New York Times bestselling author and social media expert returns with hard-won advice on how to connect with customers and beat the competition by mastering social media marketing
When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they often plan for the "right hook"-their next highly anticipated sale or campaign that's going to put the competition out for the count. Even companies committed to jabbing-patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships so crucial to successful social media campaigns-still yearn to land the powerful, bruising swing that will knock out their opponent or their customer's resistance in one tooth-spritzing, killer blow. Right hooks, after all, convert traffic to sales. They easily show results and ROI. Except when they don't.
In the same passionate, street-wise style readers have come to expect, Gary Vaynerchuk is on a mission to improve marketers' right hooks by changing the way they fight to make their customers happy, and ultimately to compete. Thanks to the massive change and proliferation in social media platforms in the last four years, the winning combination of jabs and right hooks is different now. Communication is still key, but context matters more than ever. It's not just about developing high-quality content, but developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices-content tailor-made for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr. A mash-up of the best elements of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy with a 2013 spin, here is a blueprint to social media marketing strategies that really works.
…
Recommended by Daymond John, Marvin Liao, Aaron Agius, and 35 others.
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
Alex Circei
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life by Richard Branson Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki [source]
Auston Bunsen
I’ve got a few, one book that really impacted me early on as someone coming from a middle-class family was “Rich dad, Poor dad”. [source]
From the author of the bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, this is the exclusive, New York Times bestselling biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
For Chesky, a source may come in the form of a biography of a business hero such as Steve Jobs or Walt Disney. His primary book source on management technique is Andy Grove’s High Output Management. [source]
Cover unavailable
51
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
The bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets--now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing
In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows that in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle--which begins with innovators and moves to early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards--there is a vast chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. While early adopters are willing to sacrifice for the advantage of being first, the early majority waits until they know that the technology actually offers improvements in productivity. The challenge for innovators and marketers is to narrow this chasm and ultimately accelerate adoption across every segment.
This third edition brings Moore's classic work up to date with dozens of new examples of successes and failures, new strategies for marketing in the digital world, and Moore's most current insights and findings. He also includes two new appendices, the first connecting the ideas in Crossing the Chasm to work subsequently published in his Inside the Tornado, and the second presenting his recent groundbreaking work for technology adoption models for high-tech consumer markets.
…
Recommended by Andrew Chen, Drew Houston, Ev Williams, and 28 others.
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
It’s about how do technology products make their way from early adopters t the mainstream. [source]
Ron Conway
Bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. [source]
This is a key component in my Purple Cow thinking, but with a twist. I'm not as worried about the chasm as I am about the desire of marketers to go for the big middle. [source]
Cover unavailable
52
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?
Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught?
Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?
Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full?
And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?
When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?
In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.
Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same "types" of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable--making us "predictably" irrational.
From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. "Predictably Irrational" will change the way we interact with the world--one small decision at a time.
…
Recommended by Max Levchin, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, and 22 others.
Max Levchin
Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor
Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?" [source]
Andra Zaharia
'While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read … Predictably Irrational. [source]
Chris Goward
Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: … Predictably Irrational. [source]
Cover unavailable
53
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win
An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life.
Combat, the most intense and dynamic environment imaginable, teaches the toughest leadership lessons, with absolutely everything at stake. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin learned this reality first-hand on the most violent and dangerous battlefield in Iraq. As leaders of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser, their mission was one many thought impossible: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a violent, insurgent-held city deemed "all but lost." In gripping, firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories, they learned that leadership--at every level--is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.
Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training to pass on their harsh lessons learned in combat to help forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After leaving the SEAL Teams, they launched a company, Echelon Front, to teach those same leadership principles to leaders in businesses, companies, and organizations across the civilian sector. Since that time, they have trained countless leaders and worked with hundreds of companies in virtually every industry across the U.S. and internationally, teaching them how to develop their own high-performance teams and most effectively lead those teams to dominate their battlefields.
Since it's release in October 2015, Extreme Ownership has revolutionized leadership development and set a new standard for literature on the subject. Required reading for many of the most successful organizations, it has become an integral part of the official leadership training programs for scores of business teams, military units, and first responders. Detailing the mindset and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult combat missions, Extreme Ownership demonstrates how to apply them to any team or organization, in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.
Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.
Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.
While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.
In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
…
Recommended by Tobi Lütke, Kate Raworth, and Mira Kirshenbaum.
Tobi Lütke
Founder & CEO/Shopify
Tobi Lütke recommended this book on the podcast "The Knowledge Project". [source]
An essential book that unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides readers with a toolkit for building a cohesive, innovative culture, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code
If you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.
So here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and listen to Richard Poe narrate that. Those are two of the greatest feats of the english language that I can think of. Then there’s Fortress of Solitude, an amazing book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, these are great novels. Cold Mountain is a beautiful novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, I mean they’ve been around for a while. But goddamnit, get those under your belt. Those are the novels I think you should read. You know Love In The Time Of Cholera it just makes you ache. Kind of like a Hemingway thing, where Hemingway “ahh!”, it’s the same thing, you know. So I don’t know, I’m a fan of all those books. Those are my 3 slash 20 books. [source]
Graham Duncan
The author looks at a bunch of different cultures. Pixar, Navy SEALs, etc... And he’s looking for patterns among what makes people disproportionately effective as a culture. [source]
In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, students, and business people both seasoned and new that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called grit.
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.
Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.
Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.
Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.
…
Recommended by Albert Wenger, Anu Hariharan, Benjamin Spall, and 11 others.
Benjamin Spall
Question: What five books would you recommend to youngsters interested in your professional path? … Grit by Angela Duckworth [source]
Bogdan Lucaciu
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - it was frustrating to read: “Where was this book 20 years ago!?” [source]
Stephen Lew
When asked what books he would recommend to youngsters interested in his professional path, Stephen mentioned Grit. [source]
As Sam Walton himself said, this is "...a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns." It's the story of how Walton parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, he never lost the common touch. Here Walton tells his extraordinary story in his own inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure of his ambitions and achievements, Walton shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.
"Here is an extraordinary success story about a man whose empire was built not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease." (Detroit Free Press)
Expounds on the principles of discount retailing and discusses his core values of frugality and a bias for action—a willingness to try a lot of things and make many mistakes. Bezos included both in Amazon’s corporate values. [source]
Rob "Crypto Bobby" Paone
@tmac604 Read it earlier this summer, a great book 👍 and also hilarious to compare to current corporate excess ala WeWork [source]
Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.
Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses.
What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.
With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.
Unperturbed by conventional wisdom, the authors start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive. [source]
If given a choice between investing in someone who has read Rework or has an MBA, I'm investing in Rework every time. This is a must read for every entrepreneur. [source]
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
The wisdom in these pages is edgy yet simple, straightforward, and proven. Read this book multiple times to help give you the courage you need to get out there and make something great. [source]
In Originals the author addresses the challenge of improving the world from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.
…
Recommended by Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, Tony Hsieh, and 6 others.
Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]
Arianna Huffington
Founder/The Huffington Post
A fascinating, eye-opening read that will help you not just recognize your own unique gifts, but find the strength to challenge conventional wisdom to bring them to life. [source]
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
It's always interesting just to learn different perspectives, but to be careful of not trying to just say, 'Oh this book is the Bible, and we should copy that,' … Instead, I want us t0 take the parts that make sense for Zappos and try to incorporate them." [source]
Cover unavailable
60
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.
Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.
The best news is that "emotional literacy" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
…
Recommended by Drew Houston, Drew Huston, Magda Marcu, and 4 others.
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
It’s nonfiction, but it spelled out something that I just didn’t know you could kind of break down in a logical way. And, suddenly, I had this understanding about the world that I didn’t have before. [source]
Magda Marcu
One of the most eye opening for me was “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” as it offered a different perspective on leadership, and how empathy can make you a more successful leader. Every person has some degree of empathy and through this book you understand how to apply it more intently. [source]
Robert Kelsey
Yes, that’s the key revelation. But another key element, which was quite revelatory for me when I read it, is about the impact of fear on your brain. The impact of fear as a physiological response was well known when he wrote the book, but what was less well known was the idea of fear as a neurological response. He pointed to research showing what happens to the brain when fear is triggered, and it’s very damaging. There’s a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system, and deals with emotions such as fear and distress. Its main purpose is to alert you to danger and it sends an emergency signal. All those physiological responses you have are basically the body’s response to that emergency signal. That’s what people experience when they experience fear, but it’s not just the fear of a dog barking at you or someone attacking you, it’s fear based on a fear conditioning. These are moments when something happens to you that induces fear or distress, and can include fear of failure or fear of being upset, and the same response occurs. [source]
Cover unavailable
61
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
If you’ve never read The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, you’ve been missing out on one of the best-selling leadership books of all time. If you have read the original version, then you’ll love this new expanded and updated one.
Internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author John C. Maxwell has taken this million-seller and made it even better:
Every Law of Leadership has been sharpened and updated Seventeen new leadership stories are included Two new Laws of Leadership are introduced New evaluation tool will reveal your leadership strengths—and weaknesses New application exercises in every chapter will help you grow Why would Dr. Maxwell make changes to his best-selling book?
“A book is a conversation between the author and reader,” says Maxwell. “It’s been ten years since I wrote The 21 Laws of Leadership. I’ve grown a lot since then. I’ve taught these laws in dozens of countries around the world. This new edition gives me the opportunity to share what I’ve learned.”
Dave Ramsey recommended this book on his website. [source]
Lex Na Wei Ming
I remember during the days when I was in National Service, between the ages of 19 to 21. I had a lot of time on my hands. I managed to stumble upon the author by the name of John C Maxwell. He was really popular during that period of time and he had so many good titles like “Developing the leader with you.”, “Today Matters.”, “The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.”. These series of books really mold me into who I am now. These are very deep character building books. And they came at the right time when I was at an age ready to be mentored and guided. [source]
In this book, Robert Greene demonstrates that the ultimate form of power is mastery itself. By analyzing the lives of such past masters as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Leonard da Vinci, as well as by interviewing nine contemporary masters, including tech guru Paul Graham and animal rights advocate Temple Grandin, Greene debunks our culture’s many myths about genius and distills the wisdom of the ages to reveal the secret to greatness. With this seminal text as a guide, readers will learn how to unlock the passion within and become masters.
What better way to learn about success then the minute paths taken by 100s or 1000s of successful people.It feels like Robert takes everyone in history and dissects the exact moments and decisions that led to their great success. [source]
There is no living writer (or person) who has been more influential to me than Robert Greene. I met him when I was 19 years old and he’s shaped me as a person, as a writer, as a thinker. You MUST read his books. His work on power and strategy are critical for anyone trying to accomplish anything. In life, power is force we are constantly bumping up against. People have power of over us, we seek power ourselves that we might be free enough and influential enough to accomplish our goals—so we must understand where power comes from, how it works and how to get it. But pure power is meaningless. It must be joined to mastery and purpose. So read his book Mastery so that you can figure your life’s task and how to dedicate yourself to it. [source]
Boban Dedovic
Question: What books had the biggest impact on you? Perhaps changed the way you see things or dramatically changed your career path. Answer: Here are some others books that are important to me. Zero to One by Peter Thiel (on startups) Mastery by Robert Greene (life and career path study) Good to Great by Jim Collins (on growing a great company) Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher (negotiation) [source]
Cover unavailable
63
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
The world s greatest managers differ in sex, age, and race. They employ different styles and focus on different goals. Despite their differences, great managers share one trait: They break virtually every rule conventional wisdom holds sacred. They don t believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They don t try to help people overcome their weaknesses. They disregard the golden rule. They even play favorites. Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its massive in-depth study of great managers those who excelled at turning each employee s talent into performance. Companies compete to find and keep the best employees using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. This amazing book explains how the best managers select employees for talent rather than for skills or experience, how they set expectations, how they motivate people, and how they develop people. Gallup s research produced twelve simple questions that distinguish the strongest departments of a company from the rest. This book introduces this essential measuring stick and proves the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and rate of turnover."
…
Recommended by Simon Sinek, Jared Spool, Jessica Pryce-Jones, and 1 others.
Jared Spool
The first framework is from Gallup and was written up in their great book: First, Break All The Rules. https://t.co/w54in9zCyH It’s the Q12 employee engagement measures. Each question makes it simple for a manager to identify where they need to improve. https://t.co/A9L8Yx2NHp [source]
Jessica Pryce-Jones
I’m a sucker for books and I always buy management books when I get on planes. There I am at Heathrow Airport going on a business trip, and I think, ‘I’ve got to read this stuff!’ And normally I pick a book up, read the first few pages, then find I can’t face it and end up leaving it in a hotel room. But this book, I picked it up, started to read it and I thought, ‘Hallelujah! Here is a book that makes sense at last.’ And that was just so refreshing. I don’t even have a copy at the moment, because I have given about ten of them away to people saying, ‘You have just got to read this!’ [source]
Cover unavailable
64
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!
Robert T. Kiyosaki
4.2
In Rich Dad Poor Dad, the #1 Personal Finance book of all time, Robert Kiyosaki shares the story of his two dad: his real father, whom he calls his ‘poor dad,’ and the father of his best friend, the man who became his mentor and his ‘rich dad.’ One man was well educated and an employee all his life, the other’s education was “street smarts” over traditional classroom education and he took the path of entrepreneurship…a road that led him to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Robert’s poor dad struggled financially all his life, and these two dads—these very different points of view of money, investing, and employment—shaped Robert’s thinking about money.
Robert has challenged and changed the way tens of millions of people, around the world, think about money and investing and he has become a global advocate for financial education and the path to financial freedom. Rich Dad Poor Dad (and the Rich Dad series it spawned) has sold over 36 million copies in English and translated editions around the world.
Rich Dad Poor Dad will… • explode the myth that you need to earn a high income to become rich • challenge the belief that your house is an asset • show parents why they can’t rely on the school system to teach their kids about money • define, once and for all, an asset and a liability • explain the difference between good debt and bad debt • teach you to see the world of money from different perspectives • discuss the shift in mindset that can put you on the road to financial freedom
Will Smith mentioned sharing this book with his son. [source]
Cover unavailable
65
The Ten-Day MBA 4th Ed.: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering the Skills Taught In America's Top Business Schools
Steven Silbiger
4.2
Steven Silbiger's international bestseller, "The Ten-Day MBA," has already helped thousands master the skills taught at America's top-ten business schools--and at a fraction of the time and staggering cost that acquiring an MBA typically demands. This newly revised fourth edition contains the most up-to-date information available for understanding the intricacies of today's complex global business world. Distilling the material contained in most popular business courses presently offered at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the University of Virginia--including leadership, corporate ethics and compliance, financial planning, real estate, and all the latest topics--this invaluable volume will teach you how to: Read and understand financial statements Draft and adopt effective and comprehensive marketing plans Comprehend accounting rules and methods Manage your relationship with your boss Develop corporate strategies Understand the present value concept Use quantitative techniques to evaluate projects Value stock, bond, and option investments Interpret the language of business law Master the most-used MBA jargon . . . and more
The information, the expertise, and the confidence you need for success are all in the pages of this remarkable book--at the rate of one easy-to-follow chapter per day.
…
Cover unavailable
66
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box
Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Its sales continue to increase year after year, and the book's popularity has gone global, with editions now available in over twenty languages.
Leadership and Self-Deception shows how the problems that typically prevent superior performance in organizations and cause conflicts in our personal lives are the result of a little-known problem called self-deception. People who are in self-deception live and work as if trapped in a box. They can't see the reality around them--they're blind to the self-serving motivations that are sabotaging them on the job and at home. But there is a way out. Through an entertaining and engaging story, Leadership and Self-Deception shows what self-deception is, how it operates, the damage it does, and, most importantly, what can be done about it.This third edition includes new research about the self-deception gap in organizations and the keys to closing this gap so that people take responsibility for their own problems and for organizational problems. It also includes the first chapter from Arbinger's latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset.
…
Recommended by Dustin Moskovitz, Bruce L. Christensen, Dave Browne, and 9 others.
Dustin Moskovitz
Co-founder/Facebook and Asana
Dustin Moskovitz recommended this book on Twitter. [source]
Bruce L. Christensen
CEO/PBS
After decades of executive leadership in senior management positions, I’ve finally found in Arbinger what I consider to be the best means of improving every measure of success. From boosting the bottom line to increasing personal joy, this book shows the way. [source]
Dave Browne
Former President & CEO/LensCrafters
Remarkable. Arbinger possesses the hidden key to productivity and creativity. Do whatever you can to get your hands on this material. [source]
Cover unavailable
67
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask"
We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversationsprovides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to:
? Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation ? Start a conversation without defensiveness ? Listen for the meaning of what is not said ? Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations ? Move from emotion to productive problem solving
…
Recommended by April Wensel, Auren Hoffman, Bogdan Lucaciu, and 1 others.
April Wensel
@amyvpellegrini I really liked a book called Difficult Conversations. I also love the book Nonviolent Communication for conflicts. [source]
I’m re-reading “Difficult Conversations”. It’s written by the “Harvard Negotiation Project” guys that also wrote “Getting to Yes” and “Thanks for the Feedback”. It allowed me to navigate super important conversations by shifting from a “who’s right” stance to a learning stance. Giving it another spin after two years from the first read as I'm working on my assertiveness. [source]
Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.
For the past five years, I've sat at a desk next to Sheryl and I've learned something from her almost every day. She has a remarkable intelligence that can cut through complex processes and find solutions to the hardest problems. Lean In combines Sheryl's ability to synthesize information with her understanding of how to get the best out of people. The book is smart and honest and funny. Her words will help all readers - especially men - to become better and more effective leaders. [source]
If you loved Sheryl Sandberg's incredible TED talk on why we have too few women leaders, or simply believe as I do that we need equality in the boardroom, then this book is for you. As Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg has first-hand experience of why having more women in leadership roles is good for business as well as society. Lean In is essential reading for anyone interested in righting the injustice of this inequality. [source]
Cover unavailable
69
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
A handsome, commemorative edition of Peter F. Drucker’s timeless classic work on leadership and management, with a foreword by Jim Collins.
What makes an effective executive?
For decades, Peter F. Drucker was widely regarded as "the dean of this country’s business and management philosophers" (Wall Street Journal). In this concise and brilliant work, he looks to the most influential position in management—the executive.
The measure of the executive, Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.
Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can—and must—be mastered:
Managing time; Choosing what to contribute to the organization; Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect; Setting the right priorities; Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making Ranging across the annals of business and government, Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.
…
Recommended by Drew Houston, Ev Williams, Guy Kawasaki, and 15 others.
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
I think one of the most valuable concepts from this book is measuring your time. [source]
"This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies." So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time.
Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"
What separates General Electric, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their rivals? How, for example, did Procter & Gamble, which began life substantially behind rival Colgate, eventually prevail as the premier institution in its industry? How was Motorola able to move from a humble battery repair business into integrated circuits and cellular communications, while Zenith never became dominant in anything other than TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell Douglas as the world's best commercial aircraft company -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell Douglas lacked?
By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished out-standing companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary companies.
Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the twenty-first century and beyond.
…
Recommended by Jeff Bezos, Drew Huston, Ev Williams, and 13 others.
recommends this book because it shows how to create a long lasting company. [source]
Tim O'Reilly
Founder/O'Reilly Media
Built to Last, by James Collins and Jerry Porras. The idea here is that great companies aren't afraid to have strong values. In fact, their cult-like values are what make them stand out from the norm. [source]
Alden Mills
Built to Last focused my daydreaming mind into what it takes to build truly great companies. [source]
The mind guides our footsteps as we progress along the pathway of life.
Purity of mind leads inevitably to purity of life, to the precious love and understanding that should control our everyday acts and attitudes towards friends and foes.
But where must one look for guidance? How does one achieve purity of mind that alone brings happiness and confidence?
The author offers his clear answers in this book As A Man Thinketh. His words have helped millions for more than a century--and they continue to point the true way to a better life for a troubled humanity.
"Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body," James Allen writes. "Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body."
Too many mortals strive to improve only their wordly position--and too few seek spiritual betterment. Such is the problem James Allen faced in his own time. The ideas he found in his inner-most heart after great searching guided him as they will guide you.
In her #1 New York Times bestsellers, Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she's showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.
When we dare to lead, we don't pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don't see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don't avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it's necessary to do good work.
But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we're choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we're scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can't do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start.
Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question:
How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?
In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love.
Brown writes, "One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of skills and practices that are 100 percent teachable. It's learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It's why we're here."
Whether you've read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you're new to Brené Brown's work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.
With Dare to Lead, Brené brings decades of research to bear in a practical and insightful guide to courageous leadership. This book is a road map for anyone who wants to lead mindfully, live bravely, and dare to lead. [source]
Co-Founder/Pixar, CEO Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios
Brene visited Pixar to talk with our filmmakers. Her message was important, as movies are best when they come from a place of vulnerability, when the people who make them encounter setbacks and are forced to overcome them, when they are willing to have their asses handed to them. It is easy to sit back and talk about the values of a safe and meaningful culture, but extraordinarily difficult to pull it off. You don’t achieve good culture without constant attention, without an environment of safety, courage, and vulnerability. These are hard skills, but they are teachable skills. Start with this book. [source]
Don’t miss one of my favorite human beings @BreneBrown, discuss her book #DareToLead on this #MarieTV: this is for every one of us that wants to show up, contribute, and lean into our purpose 💪🏼💗 https://t.co/QVgSpZe9e9 [source]
Cover unavailable
73
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Ron Chernow
4.1
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America. Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay. While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light. John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
A biography has to be really good to make read you all 800 pages. To me, this was one of those books. Since reading it earlier this year, I’ve since found out it is the favorite book of a lot of people I respect. I think something about the quality of the writing and the empathic understanding of the writer that the main lessons you would take away from someone like Rockefeller would not be business, but life lessons. In fact, when I went back through and took notes on this book, I filled out more cards for Stoicism than I did for Strategy, Business or Money. I found Rockefeller to be strangely stoic, incredibly resilient and, despite his reputation as a robber baron, humble and compassionate. Most people get WORSE as they get successful, many more get worse as they age. Rockefeller did neither of these things, he grew more open-minded the older he became, more generous, more pious, more dedicated to making a difference. Does that excuse the “awful” things that he did? Well, the things he did really weren’t that awful so yes. (By that I mean I’d certainly choose him over the robber barons of this age like Zuckerberg or Murdoch.) [source]
Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. Co-created by 470 -Business Model Canvas- practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.
Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to -the business model generation!-
…
Recommended by Nir Eyal, Steve Blank, Alexandra Stroe, and 3 others.
Alexandra Stroe
I'd recommend The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur and Zero to One by Peter Thiel when they are in the starting phase of a business that needs to validate its business model. [source]
Ashley Hathaway
I could probably name a dozen books here, but I’ll point out The Business Model Generation and Value Prop Design from Strategyzer. I steal from these constantly and are engrained in my work process. These books put into practice really taught me how to think. As soon as I saw that everything should have a foundation of empathy, what good user-testing looks like, how to test and iterate it changed everything. After that any problem could be solved. It wasn’t solving one big monolithic problem. It was going through a process. [source]
Kaci Lambe Kai
This was a great book, because it opened up the idea of what a business model is supposed to be vs what it can be. It doesn't have to be a stuffy, boring document. [source]
Cover unavailable
75
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
You want to learn about the path that we took at Zappos to get to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years. You want to learn about the path I took that eventually led me to Zappos, and the lessons I learned along the way. You want to learn from all the mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business can avoid making some of the same ones. You want to figure out the right balance of profits, passion, and purpose in business and in life. You want to build a long-term, enduring business and brand. You want to create a stronger company culture, which will make your employees and coworkers happier and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity. You want to deliver a better customer experience, which will make your customers happier and create more customer loyalty, leading to increased profits. You want to build something special. You want to find inspiration and happiness in work and in life. You ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes an excellent fire-starter.
…
Recommended by Ev Williams, Chip Conley, Adam Johnston, and 15 others.
Chip Conley
The author is a wise guy. Sincerely. He’s one of the wisest and most thoughtful business leaders of the modern age. [source]
Adam Johnston
Inspiring case study into building brand and customer service. [source]
Chelsea Frank
I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. [source]
Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.
Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?
In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.
…
Recommended by Ev Williams, Mike Shinoda, Marillyn Hewson, and 4 others.
Mike Shinoda
I know most of the guys in the band read this book. [source]
Marillyn Hewson
CEO/Lockheed Martin
CEO Marilyn Hewson recommends this book because it helped her to trust her instincts in business. [source]
Antonio Eram
When asked to name some books that had a big impact on him, Antonio mentioned Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. [source]
Cover unavailable
77
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
A grand vision defined: The CEO of Disney, one of Time's most influential people of 2019, shares the ideas and values he embraced to reinvent one of the most beloved companies in the world and inspire the people who bring the magic to life.
Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company's history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger--think global--and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.
Twelve years later, Disney is the largest, most respected media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era.
In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he's learned while running Disney and leading its 200,000 employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including:
- Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming. - Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity. - Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale. - Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them.
This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It's also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.
"The ideas in this book strike me as universal" Iger writes. "Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives."
I expected a book written by the person who has led Disney for decades to be defined by both gripping storytelling and deep leadership wisdom. The author delivers, and then some! This book is leadership gold—you won’t forget the stories or the lessons. [source]
How do you lead a fulfilling life? That profound question animates this book of inspiration and insight from world-class business strategist and bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen.After beating a heart attack, advanced-stage cancer and a stroke in three successive years, the world-renowned innovation expert and author of one of the best selling and most influential business books of all time The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen delivered a short but powerful speech to the Harvard Business School graduating class. He presented a set of personal guidelines that have helped him find meaning and happiness in his life- a challenge even the brightest and most motivated of students find daunting.Akin to The Last Lecture in its revelatory perspective following life-altering events, that speech subsequently became a hugely popular article in the Harvard Business Review and is now a groundbreaking book, putting forth a series of questions and models for success that have long been applied in the world of business, but also can be used to find cogent answers to pressing life questions: How can I be sure that I?ll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse, my family and my close friends become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity (and stay out of jail)?How Will You Measure Your Life is a highly original, surprising book from a singular business figure. Its a book sure to inspire and educate readers,companies and individuals, students of business, mid-career professionals, and even parents the world over.
…
Recommended by Nir Eyal, Dmitry Dragilev, Dragos Novac, and 5 others.
Dmitry Dragilev
How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen is a wonderful book in terms of figuring out what is you’re doing with life in general. [source]
Dragos Novac
Clay’s Innovator’s Dilemma was important. Also, about 10 years later, he had another which really had a profound impact on me and on my belief systems – How will you measure your life. [source]
Iulia Ghita
Christensen’s writings are so powerful that they make you rethink your life and your business strategies. How Will You Measure Your Life taught me that it’s easier to hold on to my principles 100% of the time than it is to hold on to them 98% of the time. Made me realize there is no “just this once” in life. [source]
The Greatest Salesman in the World is a bestseller by Og Mandino. His books have sold over 50 million copies. Published in '68, reissued in '83 by Bantam, it's a guide to a philosophy of salesmanship, telling the story of Hafid, a poor camel boy who achieves a life of abundance. A cloth edition was published by Buccaneer Books in 6/93. It takes ten months to read the book. His instructions are to read Scroll I (Ch. 8) three times a day for 30 days. After completing Scroll I continue to II (Ch. 9) & so forth thru X (Ch. 17). The Ten Scrolls are: Scroll I - Commitment Scroll II - Love Scroll III - Persistence Scroll IV - Miracle Scroll V - Time Scroll VI - Emotion Scroll VII - Laughter Scroll VIII - Value Scroll IX - Action Scroll X - Guidance His primary message is to "do it now". In the marking of Scroll IX, "I will act now" appears 18 times. While his messages have Xian undertones, it's still a message of repetitive actions to build good habits.
…
Recommended by Adam Haritan, Geoffrey James, Mark Hunter, and 3 others.
The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino is my pick for favorite book in the business field. Unlike most business books, The Greatest Salesman In The World is presented in parable form. Additionally, this book contains timeless passages and lessons that are meant to be read— both silently and aloud — on a daily basis, multiple times per day. It’s not difficult to see what major effects a book presented in this format can have on one’s life. [source]
Cover unavailable
80
The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
-Why aren't I as wealthy as I should be?- Many people ask this question of themselves all the time. Often they are hard-working, well educated middle- to high-income people. Why, then, are so few affluent. For nearly two decades the answer has been found in the bestselling The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy, reissued with a new foreword for the twenty-first century. According to the authors, most people have it all wrong about how you become wealthy in America. Wealth in America is more often the result of hard work, diligent savings, and living below your means than it is about inheritance, advance degrees, and even intelligence. The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. You will learn, for example, that millionaires bargain shop for used cars, pay a tiny fraction of their wealth in income tax, raise children who are often unaware of their family's wealth until they are adults, and, above all, reject the big-spending lifestyles most of us associate with rich people. In fact, you will learn that the flashy millionaires glamorized in the media represent only a tiny minority of America's rich. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, based on the principle that little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default.
No gimmicks. No Hyperbole. No Magic Bullet. The Compound Effect is a distillation of the fundamental principles that have guided the most phenomenal achievements in business, relationships, and beyond. This easy-to-use, step-by-step operating system allows you to multiply your success, chart your progress, and achieve any desire. If you're serious about living an extraordinary life, use the power of The Compound Effect to create the success you want. You will find strategies including:
How to win--every time! The No. 1 strategy to achieve any goal and triumph over any competitor, even if they're smarter, more talented or more experienced. Eradicating your bad habits (some you might be unaware of!) that are derailing your progress. The real, lasting keys to motivation--how to get yourself to do things you don't feel like doing. Capturing the elusive, awesome force of momentum. Catch this, and you'll be unstoppable. The acceleration secrets of superachievers. Do they have an unfair advantage? Yes they do, and now you can too!
…
Cover unavailable
82
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk
World-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors Al Ries and Jack Trout reveal 22 laws of marketing, with hundreds of examples that illustrate their success, in this innovative and sensible guide to marketing. Each law is described in detail and backed up by numerous examples of what worked and what didn't in the international marketplace.
Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: Purple Cow by Seth Godin End of Jobs by Taylor Pearson Rework by Jason Fried & DHH Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson [source]
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: I know this is sounds self-serving but I’d recommended both of my books, the soon to be released, “Niche Down: How to Become Legendary by Being Different” and Harper Collins’ “instant classic,” “Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets” In addition: The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott Back from the Dead, by Bill Walton The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by Al Ries and Jack Trout [source]
Cover unavailable
83
Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable--Includes new bonus chapter
You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?
Face it, the checklist of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed -Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow.
Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.
In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place.
…
Recommended by Joe Gebbia, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, and 21 others.
Joe Gebbia
Co-founder/Airbnb
Make something that’s distinct enough that people want to talk about it. [source]
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
A few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. [source]
Cover unavailable
84
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing
Today’s stock market is not for the faint of heart. At a time of frightening volatility, what is the average investor to do?
The answer: turn to Burton G. Malkiel’s advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free, and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio or 401(k), A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on “tax-loss harvesting,” the crown jewel of tax management; the current bitcoin bubble; and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity. And as always, Malkiel’s core insights—on stocks and bonds, as well as real estate investment trusts, home ownership, and tangible assets like gold and collectibles— along with the book’s classic life-cycle guide to investing, will help restore confidence and composure to anyone seeking a calm route through today’s financial markets.
It’s a wonderful read because it doesn’t presuppose any background knowledge of economics or finance…It’s had so much staying power. It was written in the 1970s, a bestseller when it came out, and it’s still a bestseller now. I recommend it to my MBA students today because it’s just a wonderful introduction to the field of finance. At the same time, it provides some very sensible advice for investors about how to manage their own money. [source]
Essentially, the theme of Malkiel’s book was that you could, in effect, do investing yourself. [source]
Michael Hebenstreit
If you want to get into stock trading or in case you want to become an investor, then I definitely would recommend to read the book I already mentioned and in addition: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. [source]
Cover unavailable
85
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius
We are stuck, stymied, frustrated. But it needn’t be this way. There is a formula for success that’s been followed by the icons of history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—a formula that let them turn obstacles into opportunities. Faced with impossible situations, they found the astounding triumphs we all seek.
These men and women were not exceptionally brilliant, lucky, or gifted. Their success came from timeless philosophical principles laid down by a Roman emperor who struggled to articulate a method for excellence in any and all situations.
This book reveals that formula for the first time—and shows us how we can turn our own adversity into advantage.
…
Recommended by James Altucher, Marvin Liao, Alok Kejriwal, and 19 others.
My life has been beset with obstacles. It takes practice (and pain) to surmount them and achieve success. This author’s book is a how-to guide for just that. [source]
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
Alok Kejriwal
The Obstacle is the way - Book review Read the book for the trivia and the amazing factual knowledge points inside. The message will automatically come through. See pic for review https://t.co/xkhms66w9d [source]
Cover unavailable
86
The Elements of Style
William Jr. Strunk
4.1
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. And now "The Elements of Style"-the most widely read and employed English style manual-is available in a specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title's vast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantly bound edition of this time-tested classic. Offering the same content as the Fourth Edition, revised in 1999, the new casebound 50th Anniversary Edition includes a brief overview of the book's illustrious history. Used extensively by individual writers as well as high school and college students of writing, it has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. This new deluxe edition makes the perfect gift for writers of any age and ability level. Fifty Years of Acclaim for "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White "I first read "Elements of Style" during the summer before I went off to Exeter, and I still direct my students at Harvard to their definition about the difference between 'that' and 'which.' It is the Bible for good, clear writing." -- Henry Louis Gates Jr. "For writers of all kinds and sizes the world begins and ends with Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." Only something to actually write about trumps the list of what is required to put words together in some kind of coherent way. I treasure its presence in my life and salute its fifty years of glory and accomplishment." -- Jim Lehrer ""The Elements of Style" remains an unwavering beacon of light in these grammatically troubled times. I would be lost without it." -- Ann Patchett "To the extent I know how to write clearly at all, I probably taught myself while I was teaching others -- seventh graders, in Flint, Michigan, in 1967. I taught them with a copy of Strunk & White lying in full view on my desk, sort of in the way the Gideons leave Bibles in cheap hotel rooms, as a way of saying to the hapless inhabitant: 'In case your reckless ways should strand you here, there's help.' S&W doesn't really teach you how to write, it just tantalizingly reminds you that there's an orderly way to go about it, that clarity's ever your ideal, but -- really -- it's all going to be up to you." -- Richard Ford ""The Elements of Style" never seems to go out of date. Its counsel is sound and funny, wise and unpretentious. And while its precepts are a foundation of direct communication, Strunk and White do not insist on a way of writing beyond clear expression. The rest is up to the imagination, the intelligence within." -- David Remnick, editor of "The New Yorker" "It's the toughness-the irreverence and implicit laughter-that attracted me to the little book when I was seventeen. I fell in love with Strunk & White's loathing for cant and bloviation, the ruthless cutting of crap, jargon, and extra words. For me, that skeptical directness included a tacit permission by "The Elements of Style" to break its rules on occasion: an alloy of generosity in the blade, a grace I still admire and still learn from." -- Robert Pinsky "In the quest for clarity, one can have no better guides than Strunk and White. For me, their book has been invaluable and remains essential." -- Dan Rather "Eschew surplusage! A perfect book." --Jonathan Lethem "Not until I started teaching writing and I reread "The Elements of Style" did I realize that most everything I would be teaching young writers, and everything I would be learning myself as a writer, was contained between the covers of this slim, elegant, wise little book." -- Julia Alvarez "Strunk and White seared their way into my brain long ago, and I benefit from them daily." -- Steven J. Dubner, co-author of "Freakonomics" "Since high school, I have kept a copy of this book handy. That should be unnecessary. I should, by now, have fully internalized "The Elements of Style." But sometimes I get entangled in a paragraph that refuses to be 'clear, brief, bold.' I dip back into "The Elements of Style" and am refreshed. After Scott Simon interviewed me on NPR about whether the word 'e-mail' needs a hyphen (yes, it does), some listeners, including friends of mine, wondered why I had answered in the affirmative when asked, in passing, 'Are you a drunken white man?' Those listeners misheard. 'Strunk and White man' was what Scott said." -- Roy Blount Jr. "Strunk & White--writing's good-natured law firm--still contains enough sparkling good sense to clean up the whole bloviating blogosphere." -- Thomas Mallon "I used Strunk -- that's what we called it, Strunk -- as a student at Berkeley fifty years ago. I didn't know that it was new, and that we were the first generation to be educated in "The Elements of Style." I got a firm foundation in the English language, learned to write basically, and could depict the realistic world. Then I was able to become an impressionist and expressionist." -- Maxine Hong Kingston "Strunk and White's gigantic little book must be the most readable advice on writing ever written. Side by side with Roget, Shakespeare, the Bible, and a dictionary, it's an essential for every writer's shelf." -- X.J. Kennedy" ""With what joy I welcome the fiftieth anniversary of "The Elements of Style." I am greatly indebted to this book for the invaluable help it has given me all these years." -- Horton Foote "Elegant, droll, and perfectly proportioned, and like your favorite aunt, strict but affectionate. And, like your favorite aunt, full of optimism: You can, and will, be a better writer! There has never been a better, briefer, or more loved book about the art and craft of communicating." -- Susan Orlean "This book is an essential tool. It has been of great use to me and is probably responsible for my best writing. I owe my success to Strunk and White; only the mistakes are mine." -- Ben Affleck, in "O, the Oprah Magazine" "This book is a wonderful example of teaching by example. Not only does it recommend clear and concise writing, it demonstrates it. Written in the style of a friend offering help, it is a godsend to anyone wanting to put words on paper. Thank you, Messieurs Strunk and White. And Happy Anniversary, "Elements of Style."" -- S.E. Hinton "When I began to have ... I wouldn't say arguments but conversations in my mind with Strunk and White about a few of their rules and principles, I knew I was coming into my own. If only they were still here to talk things over! No doubt their side of the exchange would be kindly put, well-informed, and wise. They'd probably help me with my side of it. What more could one want from writers reaching out to help other writers?" -- Barbara Wallraff, language columnist for "The Atlantic" "I don't believe there is a serious writer alive who doesn't have a worn copy of 'Strunk & White'on his or her bookshelf." -- Mignon Fogarty, author of "Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips ""for Better Writing" "This little book has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to write better -- partly by precept and partly by example. It continues to influence more writers than any other. It's a force for good in the world." -- Bryan A. Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage" "I can think of no better guide to good writing, and I always think of this little classic with a warm heart. More importantly, I revisit its pages often. It's the one essential book on writing." -- Jay Parini, author of "Why Poetry Matters" "Clarity and simplicity have always been the goals, and this book shows the way. It has always been a lighthouse in the dark and stormy night of student prose, of all of our prose." -- Ron Carlson "The only rules you are ever going to get from me are all in Strunk and White." --Ursula K. Le Guin, from "Steering the Craft " "["The Elements of Style "is] a book to which I return from time to time, the way I periodically reread Shakespeare. I always discover something new, settle a question that has been puzzling me, or learn a principle of usage that I have been pretending to know, a pretense that has resulted in inconsistency and in the sort of errors from which I can only pray some saintly copy editor will save me." -- Francine Prose, from "Reading"" Like A Writer" ..".still a little book, small enough and important enough to carry in your pocket, as I carry mine." -- Charles Osgood "Almost every writer has a Strunk and White story. One journalism professor spends the first two weeks of school forcing his students to memorize the book. A top editor at a major paper buys copies at yard sales to distribute to her writers and interns. It has even caused love affairs. . . . Could its greatness be any more clear?" -- Jesse Sheidlower, American Editor of the "Oxford"" English Dictionary," on NPR" ""If the English language is one of the finest homes ever devised for the human spirit, "Elements" is the best guided house tour we've got." --David Gelernter, "The Wall Street Journal" ..".Should be the daily companion of anyone who writes for a living and, for that matter, anyone who writes at all." "--"Jonathan Yardley, " Greensboro (N.C.) Daily News" "No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume." -- Herbert A. Kenny, "The Boston Globe" "Buy it, study it, enjoy it. It's as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility." -- Charles Poore, "The New York Times" "White is one of the best stylists and most lucid minds in this country. What he says and his way of saying it are equally rewarding." "-- "Edmund Fuller, "The Wall Street Journal ""If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of "The Elements of Style." The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy." -- Dorothy Parker, "Esquire"
…
Recommended by Tobi Lütke, Alina Varlanuta, Ann Handley, and 3 others.
Tobi Lütke
Founder & CEO/Shopify
My most frequently gifted book is this book because I like good writing. [source]
Alina Varlanuta
My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: The Elements of Style. [source]
Bill Nye
This is my guide. I accept that I’ll never write anything as good as the introductory essay by the author. It’s brilliant. [source]
Why is change so difficult and frightening? How do you create change when you have few resources and no title or authority to back you up? Chip and Dan Heath, the best-selling authors of Made to Stick, are back with a ground-breaking book that addresses one of the greatest challenges of our personal and professional lives — how to change things when change is hard.
In their follow-up book to the critically acclaimed international bestseller Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath talk about how difficult change is in our companies, our careers, and our lives, why change is so hard, and how we can overcome our resistance and make change happen. The Heaths liken the human mind to two distinct entities — the animal mind, or what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the elephant, and the logical brain, which Haidt describes as the rider. The elephant is instinctive; it acts on emotion. It likes gorging on Oreos and sleeping in. And it loves routines — doing things the same old way, every day.
The rider is the planner and thinker. The rider obsesses about the future. He or she wants to stop eating junk food and stop hitting the snooze button. But it’s hard, because when the rider and elephant disagree on where to go, the rider usually loses. And that describes the essential tension between our primitive emotional brain and our high intellect, and helps to explain why changing how we behave is so difficult. The secret to making a switch is understanding this odd couple relationship. Direct the Rider. Motivate the Elephant. Shape the Path.
Throughout Switch, Chip and Dan Heath illustrate and explain situations in which sweeping change was adopted, from a university researcher who ended the cycle of child abuse in a group of families, to an entrepreneur who turned his skeptical employees into customer service zealots and saved his company.
In the tradition of Made to Stick, Blink, and Outliers, Switch is filled with engaging and entertaining stories of how companies and individuals have brought about and sustained significant change. An indispensable guide to making change happen, it is certain to become a classic.
…
Recommended by Africa Mentor, Richard H Thaler, Satya Patel, and 2 others.
Africa Mentor
6 fine summer reads | London Business School London Business School Review A good book is the best travel companion – wherever you are. By the pool or on your commute, be transported with these titles chos... https://t.co/Wo9NYOrwqG via @theafricamentor #entrepreneur #africabiz [source]
Tudor Mihailescu
First thing first, finance people need to be decent communicators, ideally awesome communicators. There is an art in building a case or in delivering a presentation and we need to treat this step as seriously as we have treated the other steps. I do believe this is a top priority for an aspiring or practicing CFO - There are plenty of books on this topic, I would recommend the works of Chip and Dan Health like Switch and Made to Stick [source]
Cover unavailable
88
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?
Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.
Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:
- China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?
Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
"I read two books that raise big, interesting questions about social change and technological progress. I’m planning to write longer reviews of each of these books, but let me flag them for you now. One is Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.The topic of this book is why some countries have prospered and created great living conditions for their citizens while others have not. This is an important topic, which I care a lot about. The book makes an appealing argument that economic development depends on political institutions that protect individual rights. It is well written and very easy to read with lots of interesting historical stories about different countries. But it is a major disappointment. Its analysis is vague and simplistic. I’ll explain more in a longer review." [source]
My next book for A Year of Books is Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson. This book explores the different kinds of social institutions and incentives that nations have applied to encourage prosperity, economic development and elimination of poverty. This is a good complement to our last book, Portfolios of the Poor, which focused on how people live in poverty. This one discusses why poverty exists and how to reduce it. [source]
In terms of understanding this top inequality, I mentioned the possibility that it might be about politics. How should we think about politics? What are the levers of politics? For that we need a conceptual framework and that’s what this book tries to provide. It’s co-authored with my long-term collaborator and friend Jim Robinson – and it’s not about US or UK or Canadian inequality. It runs through several thousand years of history, and tries to explain how societies work and why, often, they fail to generate prosperity for their citizens. It’s a very political story. [source]
Cover unavailable
89
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Clears out the mumbo jumbo and muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world
Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader, whether the CEO at a Fortune 100 company, an entrepreneur, a church pastor, the head of a school, or a government official. Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.”
A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for overcoming—the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect in challenges as varied as putting a man on the moon, fighting a war, launching a new product, responding to changing market dynamics, starting a charter school, or setting up a government program. Rumelt’s nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can be put to work on Monday morning.
Surprisingly, a good strategy is often unexpected because most organizations don’t have one. Instead, they have “visions,” mistake financial goals for strategy, and pursue a “dog’s dinner” of conflicting policies and actions.
Rumelt argues that the heart of a good strategy is insight—into the true nature of the situation, into the hidden power in a situation, and into an appropriate response. He shows you how insight can be cultivated with a wide variety of tools for guiding your own thinking. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis.
Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.
…
Recommended by Ann Handley, John Kay, Louis Grenier, and 3 others.
It’s very well written and I see I am quoted on the back cover saying, ‘This is the only book about business strategy which I didn’t want to put down.' [source]
Louis Grenier
If you want to think about strategy, the proper strategy, how to understand what to do, what not to do, read: “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”, “Good to Great” and “Blue Ocean Strategy”. [source]
Patricia Reed
I loved Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt. It had many stories and examples about how strategy is often misconstrued, and what leaders can do to ensure they have a proper strategy. [source]
Cover unavailable
90
The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Since its original release, The First 90 Days has become the bestselling globally acknowledged bible of leadership and career transitions. In this updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition, internationally known leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins gives you the keys to successfully negotiating your next move—whether you’re onboarding into a new company, being promoted internally, or embarking on an international assignment.
In The First 90 Days, Watkins outlines proven strategies that will dramatically shorten the time it takes to reach what he calls the "breakeven point" when your organization needs you as much as you need the job. This new edition includes a substantial new preface by the author on the new definition of a career as a series of transitions; and notes the growing need for effective and repeatable skills for moving through these changes. As well, updated statistics and new tools make this book more reader-friendly and useful than ever.
As hundreds of thousands of readers already know, The First 90 Days is a road map for taking charge quickly and effectively during critical career transition periods—whether you are a first-time manager, a mid-career professional on your way up, or a newly minted CEO.
…
Cover unavailable
91
SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff
The international bestseller that revolutionized high-end selling!
Written by Neil Rackham, former president and founder of Huthwaite corporation, SPIN Selling is essential reading for anyone involved in selling or managing a sales force. Unquestionably the best-documented account of sales success ever collected and the result of the Huthwaite corporation's massive 12-year, $1-million dollar research into effective sales performance, this groundbreaking resource details the revolutionary SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) strategy.
In SPIN Selling, Rackham, who has advised leading companies such as IBM and Honeywell delivers the first book to specifically examine selling high-value product and services. By following the simple, practical, and easy-to-apply techniques of SPIN, readers will be able to dramatically increase their sales volume from major accounts. Rackham answers key questions such as "What makes success in major sales" and "Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?"
You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won't work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales. Packed with real-world examples, illuminating graphics, and informative case studies - and backed by hard research data - SPIN Selling is the million-dollar key to understanding and producing record-breaking high-end sales performance.
…
Recommended by Mark Roberge, Geoffrey James, Michael Herrmann, and 3 others.
Mark Roberge
CRO/HubSpot
The other book on selling is an oldie but goldie, never goes away: SPIN Selling, by Neil Rackham. It's the one when a founder is trying to learn how to sell, belly to belly, I tell them to check out Spin Selling. [source]
Yes, it was sometime earlier this year. I read a book SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham. Chapter four has invaluable insights and instructions how to do sales calls and improve the probability that you make a sale. This year, I had to change my role at ProteusThemes, as I have thoroughly explained in my other interview. I learned in the SPIN Selling book how to structure both the user interviews and the sales calls in a way that people like to participate and eventually buy from you because you show that you care about them and their business. Everything became easier since. [source]
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost philosophers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder.
In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile" is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension.
Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, and proposing that things be built in an antifragile manner. Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave-and thrive-in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. He who is not antifragile will perish. Why is the city state better than the nation state, why is debt bad for you, and why is almost everything modern bound to fail? The book covers innovation, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. Throughout, the voice and recipes of the ancient wisdom from Phoenician, Roman, Greek, and Medieval sources are heard loud and clear.
You ask about success. To be successful you have to avoid being “fragile” – the idea that if something hurts you, you let collapse completely. You also have to avoid simply being resilient. Bouncing back is not enough. Antifragile is when something tries to hurt you and you come back stronger. That is real life business. That is real life success. Nassim focuses on the economy. But when I read the book I kept asking myself, “how can I apply this to the areas of my life where I feel most fragile?” [source]
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
Vlad Tenev
The general concept is applicable to many fields beyond biology, for instance finance, economics and monetary policy. [source]
Cover unavailable
93
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment.
More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing.
Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.
…
Recommended by Denise Morris Kipnis.
Denise Morris Kipnis
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: In addition to Built to Change, Process Consultation, and Flawless Consulting, I would add: The Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach & Smith Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture by Cameron & Quinn Designing Organizations by Galbraith Understanding Research Methods by Patten Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter [source]
Cover unavailable
94
The One Minute Manager
Blanchard, Ken, Johnson, Spencer
4.0
For more than twenty years, millions of managers in Fortune 500 companies and small businesses nationwide have followed The One Minute Manager's techniques, thus increasing their productivity, job satisfaction, and personal prosperity. These very real results were achieved through learning the management techniques that spell profitability for the organization and its employees.
The One Minute Manager is a concise, easily read story that reveals three very practical secrets: One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands. The audio also presents several studies in medicine and the behavioral sciences that clearly explain why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people. By the audio's end you will know how to apply them to your own situation and enjoy the benefits.
…
Recommended by Daymond John, Skip Prichard, and Todd Adkins.
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.
Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.
A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.
Capital sparked a fantastic global discussion this year about inequality. Piketty kindly spent an hour discussing his work with me before I finished my review. As I told him, although I have concerns about some of his secondary points and policy prescriptions, I agree with his most important conclusions: inequality is a growing problem and that governments should play a role in reducing it. I admire his work and hope it draws in more smart people to study the causes of, and cures for, inequality. [source]
This is the book that was catapulted by its conclusion: r > g. That the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate of the economy. Which means that capital, and the people who own it, will end up with a larger and larger share of all wealth and income in the economy as time goes on. It’s a dense dive into the historical data on wealth, income, and economic growth from the optic of inequality. It’s fascinating to realize just how little economic growth there was before the industrial revolution (<0.1% at times). Centuries would pass where societies got almost no more productive, and thus saw no per-capita growth. In the past few decades, we’ve moved closer to the historical norm. Real growth through productivity improvements is down a lot since that former golden period, most western societies aren’t growing their population as rapidly as they were, and thus hereditary wealth and privileges are coming back as prime determinants of inequality. Despite the dense approach, the book isn’t in anyway unapproachable. It’s well told and easily read. And it’s about as timely as it gets. Highly recommend it so far. [source]
Piketty explains the economic crisis that we face in ways that also explain the political crisis. He does this by talking about the rise of what he calls ‘patrimonial capital’: wealth arising from inheritance, rent, and interest payments which greatly outweighs any wealth arising from hard work and enterprise. [source]
Cover unavailable
96
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know
“Gives moms-to-be a big helping of peace of mind!” —Harvey Karp M.D., bestselling author of The Happiest Baby on the Block
Pregnancy—unquestionably one of the most profound, meaningful experiences of adulthood—can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices.
When award-winning economist Emily Oster was a mom-to-be herself, she evaluated the data behind the accepted rules of pregnancy, and discovered that most are often misguided and some are just flat-out wrong. Debunking myths and explaining everything from the real effects of caffeine to the surprising dangers of gardening, Expecting Bettering is the book for every pregnant woman who wants to enjoy a healthy and relaxed pregnancy—and the occasional glass of wine.
…
Cover unavailable
97
What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
America's most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They're intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle--and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith's straightforward, jargon-free advice, it's amazingly easy behavior to change. Executives who hire Goldsmith for one-on-one coaching pay $250,000 for the privilege. With this book, his help is available for 1/10,000th of the price.
…
Recommended by Cody McLain, Mark Moses, and Michael Sliwinski.
Cody McLain
Will assume career path is running a startup, getting clients and managing a team of employees or collaborating with founders. These are some of the best books to cover these areas. It’s hard running a startup, let alone being the person who has to make the highest decisions in the organization. These books help provide the framework in how to run a successful organization but also share some of the stories and pitfalls from other founders so you can avoid making the same mistakes. [source]
Mark Moses
listing the books that had the biggest impact on him [source]
Michael Sliwinski
Now I’m reading @coachgoldsmith’s book: what got you here won’t get you there - and it’s brilliant! https://t.co/xwcnpbiCSL [source]
New York Times bestseller and named Best Marketing Book of 2014 by the American Marketing Association
What makes things popular? Why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral?
If you said advertising, think again. People don't listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral?
Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these questions. He's studied why New York Times articles make the paper's own Most E-mailed List, why products get word of mouth, and how social influence shapes everything from the cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. In this book, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos.
Contagious combines groundbreaking research with powerful stories. Learn how a luxury steakhouse found popularity through the lowly cheese-steak, why anti-drug commercials might have actually increased drug use, and why more than 200 million consumers shared a video about one of the seemingly most boring products there is: a blender. If you've wondered why certain stories get shared, e-mails get forwarded, or videos go viral, Contagious explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to craft contagious content. This book provides a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread - for designing messages, advertisements, and information that people will share. Whether you're a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out, Contagious will show you how to make your product or idea catch on.
…
Recommended by Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, Andrew Medal, and 10 others.
Andrew Medal
The world is #CONTAGIOUS ☢️☢️☢️ • • My dog and I love this book. I read to him when he wants to learn about marketing techniques. The last time I read this book was in 2013. If you want a read that dissects how and… https://t.co/6v0ckSnSQe [source]
Ee Ling Lim
Contagious by Jonah Berger is another interesting one for those trying to figure out how to market their business. In Contagious, Jonah identifies what makes some things go viral, and narrowed it down to 6 principles STEPPS: Social currency (content that makes people look good when they talk about it), Triggers (top of mind topics), Emotion (content that we care about, especially high arousal ones like anger, awe, excitement and humor), Public, Practical and Stories. [source]
Erik Cheong
Explains why certain products and ideas become popular while others fail. It reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos. [source]
Cover unavailable
99
The 10x Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
Achieve "Massive Action" results and accomplish your business dreams! While most people operate with only three degrees of action-no action, retreat, or normal action-if you're after big goals, you don't want to settle for the ordinary. To reach the next level, you must understand the coveted 4th degree of action. This 4th degree, also known as the 10 X Rule, is that level of action that guarantees companies and individuals realize their goals and dreams.
The 10 X Rule unveils the principle of "Massive Action," allowing you to blast through business clichZs and risk-aversion while taking concrete steps to reach your dreams. It also demonstrates why people get stuck in the first three actions and how to move into making the 10X Rule a discipline. Find out exactly where to start, what to do, and how to follow up each action you take with more action to achieve Massive Action results.
Learn the "Estimation of Effort" calculation to ensure you exceed your targets Make the Fourth Degree a way of life and defy mediocrity Discover the time management myth Get the exact reasons why people fail and others succeed Know the exact formula to solve problems Extreme success is by definition outside the realm of normal action. Instead of behaving like everybody else and settling for average results, take Massive Action with The 10 X Rule, remove luck and chance from your business equation, and lock in massive success.
…
Recommended by Haris Siddique and Mark Struczewski.
Haris Siddique
I would say because it influenced me and created an imperial impact on my career path. An amazing book to read as it teaches you How to reprogram your mind in minutes to eliminate fears and phobia. Being a sales and marketing professional. I adopted many great changes in me and used some of the best techniques which are explained very well in this book by Grant Cardone. I would definitely recommend it to everyone who wants growth. Be focused and keep fueling the fire of success with your tries and learnings! [source]
Mark Struczewski
I love what Grant Cardone writes in The 10X Rule, "wouldn't coming up short on a 10X target accomplish more than coming up short on one-tenth of that goal?" In other words, he says it's better to fall short of a one million dollar goal than a $100,000 goal. [source]
Cover unavailable
100
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
With a new Afterword addressing today’s financial crisis
A BUSINESS WEEK BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In this business classic—now with a new Afterword in which the author draws parallels to the recent financial crisis—Roger Lowenstein captures the gripping roller-coaster ride of Long-Term Capital Management. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein explains not just how the fund made and lost its money but also how the personalities of Long-Term’s partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the culture of Wall Street itself contributed to both their rise and their fall.
When it was founded in 1993, Long-Term was hailed as the most impressive hedge fund in history. But after four years in which the firm dazzled Wall Street as a $100 billion moneymaking juggernaut, it suddenly suffered catastrophic losses that jeopardized not only the biggest banks on Wall Street but the stability of the financial system itself. The dramatic story of Long-Term’s fall is now a chilling harbinger of the crisis that would strike all of Wall Street, from Lehman Brothers to AIG, a decade later. In his new Afterword, Lowenstein shows that LTCM’s implosion should be seen not as a one-off drama but as a template for market meltdowns in an age of instability—and as a wake-up call that Wall Street and government alike tragically ignored.
…
Recommended by Max Levchin and John Gapper.
Max Levchin
Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor
Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?" [source]
John Gapper
The Fed itself did not bail out LTCM, but it was worried enough to get a bunch of big banks into the room and say, “Would you care to chip in and save this thing?” Which they obligingly did – and then liquidated it. The Fed foresaw that the failure of a single big hedge fund could send shock waves through the entire financial system. The issue of systemic risk was highlighted. [source]
1
