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How can you be the best leader you can be? How can you manage a successful organization, whether it be a start-up or a Fortune 500? There are countless management books out there, but finding the ones that are both revolutionary and practical can be a tall order. We’ve done the work for you to narrow down the list to the 15 best management books.
Here’s our carefully researched list of the 15 best management books of all time. To compose this list, we used quantitative criteria such as:
- High-quality recommendations from successful leaders like Charlie Munger, Reid Hoffman, Sheryl Sandberg, and Tim Ferriss.
- Number of weeks on bestseller lists like the New York Times
- Common perception and ratings by common readers, from networks like Amazon and Goodreads
Don’t have time to get the benefits of reading? That’s where Shortform comes in. With Shortform, you can get the key lessons from the best nonfiction books in minutes, not in hours. Our experts condense the key lessons from management books like these into an efficient summary. Check out our high-quality summaries of these 15 books to see if you can learn more quickly.
1. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, by Adam Grant
People fit into one of three reciprocity styles. “Givers” like to give more than they get, paying attention to what others need. “Takers” like to get more than they give, seeing the world as a competitive place and primarily looking out for themselves. And “matchers” balance and give on a quid pro quo basis, willing to exchange favors but careful about not being exploited.
Of these 3 styles, which do you think tends to be the most successful? You might think that aggressive takers come out on top, but Wharton professor Adam Grant argues givers are actually the most successful. In Give and Take, learn how givers build larger, more supportive networks; inspire the most creativity from their colleagues; and achieve the most successful negotiations.
John Hall, co-founder and president of Calendar, said of Give and Take, “Two titles I truly enjoyed were The Go-Giver and Give and Take. Every time I meet a leader I view as someone who looks out for others and gives back, there’s a nearly 90% chance that he or she has read one or both of these books.”
Best-selling author of The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin, writes, “Packed with cutting-edge research, concrete examples, and deep insight, Give and Take offers extraordinarily thought-provoking—and often surprising—conclusions about how our interactions with others drive our success and happiness. This important and compulsively-readable book deserves to be a huge success.”
2. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
Successful victory during conflict requires more than just cunning and brawn. Whether you are involved in an individual conflict or are leading a group of people through a competition, the strategies required to prepare for and engage in battle are the same.
The Art of War by ancient Chinese warrior and philosopher Sun Tzu provides the essential elements that must be considered to develop strategic conflict resolution tactics. Sun Tzu’s principles guide you through the steps required to become a competent leader and fighter. They teach you how to determine victory, when to engage in combat, and when to use intelligence and intimidation to dissolve conflict without confrontation. With these teachings, you’ll understand how to read conflict and opponents to determine the best course of action.
LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman read Sun Tzu as a boy, “which informed his strategic thinking.”
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?…The Art of War (Sun Tsu)….you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.”
3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, by Stephen R. Covey
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey
55 min reading time
36.6k reads
audio version available
Do you want to make your life better? Are you struggling in your personal or professional life, your interactions with other people, your life balance, or your life’s purpose?
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides an inside-out approach to improving yourself and your life. This method entails examining and adjusting your character, your motives, and how you see the world in order to change how you behave and how you interact with others. Learn how to best focus your time, define your personal mission, and build productive relationships with other people.
Arianna Huffington writes, “[Thirty] years after it first appeared, the wisdom of The 7 Habits is more relevant than ever. On an individual level people are burning out, and on a collective level we are burning up the planet. So Dr. Covey’s emphasis on self-renewal and his understanding that leadership and creativity require us to tap into our own physical, mental, and spiritual resources are exactly what we need now.”
4. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber
Many people dream of quitting a job and becoming their own boss by starting a business. A million new businesses are started each year, but 40 percent fail within the first year and 80 percent fail within five years. Underlying the high failure rate are persistent romantic notions about how businesses are born and what it takes to succeed.
In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber explains how focusing solely on the product undermines new businesses and just trying to work harder undermines new businesses. “The right approach is to view your business like a franchise—to systematize operations so that it no longer relies on you.” This thirty-year-old classic is a part-practical and part-philosophical guide to conceptualizing and starting a business.
Tim Ferriss said of The E-Myth Revisited, “If you’ve strayed from the path of systems and rules and processes, this provides an excellent road map, told in parable, for becoming an owner, instead of a constant micro-manager.”
5. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande
In the 21st century, we can do extraordinary things: we can predict dangerous storms, explore distant planets, and save people from life-threatening conditions and injuries. Yet highly trained, experienced, and capable people regularly make avoidable mistakes.
In The Checklist Manifesto, Boston surgeon Atul Gawande contends the reason is that knowledge and complexity in many fields have exceeded the capacity of any individual to get everything right. Under pressure, we make simple mistakes and overlook the obvious. Drawing lessons from spectacular successes and failures in recent years, he argues that the solution is a checklist. The book builds the case for checklists and issues a plea for adopting this backstop to human fallibility.
Tim Ferriss said, “I love a book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto. I have this book on a shelf in my living room, cover out, as a constant reminder.”
6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
by Patrick M. Lencioni
15 min reading time
25.8k reads
audio version available
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable explores how teams fail to work cohesively together through a dynamic, five-part model of dysfunction. The five dysfunctions are 1) absence of trust, 2) fear of conflict, 3) lack of commitment, 4) avoidance of accountability, and 5) inattention to results. Through identifying these root causes of poor teamwork, teams can develop specific strategies for overcoming each of them. By doing this, they will become comfortable with one another, be willing to engage in constructive debate, achieve clarity and buy-in around team priorities, hold one another to high standards, and focus on team results instead of individual ambition.
Phillip Hildebrand, the Executive VP and Chief Distribution Officer for New York Life Insurance Company, said of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “I read most best-selling business books. What sets Lencioni apart is his ability to provide insightful and practical solutions to complex management challenges.”
7. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, by James C. Collins
In Good to Great, former Stanford business professor Jim Collins offers a primer on turning the average into the exceptional. Through detailed case studies of 11 companies that went from tracking the market to exceeding it by at least 3x, Collins presents the key factors that separate merely good organizations from great ones—from rare leadership to disciplined thinking to the dogged pursuit of a core mission.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager, or just an individual looking to improve, the concepts in Good to Great provide food for thought—and spurs to action. You’ll learn what it takes to be a “Level 5” leader, why assembling the right team first is more important than having the right idea, why you should be more like a hedgehog than a fox, and why “stop doing” lists are as important as “to do” lists.
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