Good to Great
“What’s the best book I should read to make my firm better and improve my leadership?” To that question, I usually answer Jim Collins, Good to Great.
Of the millions of good firms in the world today, only a few emerge to become great. This book describes how, and the kind of people who are most effective leading firms to greatness. This classic describes solid research methodology, but communicates with simplicity and clarity some of the most important truths leaders need to grasp, whether applied to business, non-profit organizations or families.
Built To Last
If you have not read Collins’ earlier book, Built to Last, written with fellow Stanford professor Jerry Porras, you definitely should add it to your library. It demonstrates that values determine long-term profitability and stability. Collins has written other recent and segmented books, also very useful, but there is a reason that Built to Last and Good to Great were the best-selling business books of the past two decades. Reading them on your Kindle is fine, but these two books are ones you may want to buy in printed form to mark-up and pass on to your children and grandchildren.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A recent book, but correctly classified as a classic. Patrick Lencioni spins a fable about a mythical firm readers quickly realize represents many contemporary organizations. After his engaging fable, he analyzes solutions to “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results). A quick read that takes time to absorb, but is capable of producing lasting change in any type of organization in which you are involved.
Strengthsfinder 2.0
You cannot do anything you want to do — or be anything you want to be — because you are just not going to be good at everything. However, if you work with your talents, you can be extraordinary. That is the message of the latest incarnation of StrengthsFinder, a classic that has helped millions to understand what they and others do best. That leads to improved understanding and performance, whether the context is an organization, a marriage, or helping your children develop their potential. A useful read, but you have to buy the book and its unique computer code to go on-line and quantify your own unique abilities. You may be surprised at what you learn about yourself!
The Essential Drucker
The Executive’s Executive. The Consultant’s Consultant. The Professor’s Professor. Those are appropriate accolades for Peter Drucker, the person who described management for the masses. You will benefit from reading any of his many books, but this one contains the essentials, distilling an encyclopedia of management knowledge into one, readable volume.
In Search of Excellence
Dr. Tom Peters and his colleague Robert Waterman pioneered best-selling business books and speaking careers explaining their books to mass markets. When I was on a program with Tom, a member of the audience asked if most of his ideas were not similar to Peter Drucker. Tom said he had not read Drucker, but the next year at a similar meeting, he told me he went back and read Drucker and it was true, their ideas were similar. That is my way of saying, “If you want to understand classic ideas that help achieve excellence in management and strategy, read books written by Drucker and Peters. Tom later wrote many additional books with powerful ideas, but it is useful to start with the foundation. Search for Excellence was the foundation of best-selling business books.
The Innovator's Dilemma
If you are the leader in services, retailing, manufacturing or any other business, you are in danger of being pushed aside unless you abandon much of what you are now doing and adapt to challenges from the innovators who want your customers. To prevent that happening, this famous Harvard Business Professor (and a truly fine human being) provides rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. After you read this book, you probably will also want to read his Innovator’s Solution. Eastman Kodak should have read both!
The Secrets of Closing the Sale
There are many good books on selling helpful in understanding how to persuade people your ideas are worth buying. I chose this one because it contains practical examples and is succinct, written by the late Zig Ziglar, an exceptional individual who motivated multitudes with his books and seminars. Anyone can benefit from reading this book, because the entire world is a stage in which every actor has to sell to survive.
Made In America
When students asked for one book about how to build a small firm into a large one, or how to succeed as an entrepreneur, this is the book I recommended most often. Thousands of students have told me they benefitted from reading it. It covers all the essentials of finance, marketing, training, location, capital formation, logistics, and many of the other details that determine which business firms succeed and which fail. If you want a manual that documents how to create the world’s richest family, this is it.
The Reason for God
If you are a person who believes there is no reason for faith, sometimes wondering how any sane person could believe God exists, you may enjoy reading this book. However, here is a warning. It might convince you there is a reason to believe God exists! Tim Keller is a master of management, building an old church in the southern part of Manhattan into an organization believing the purpose of a church is not to build a great church, but to build a great city. The typical member of Redeemer Church is young and as likely to work in the theatre district as Wall Street. If you enjoy discussions based on literary classics, philosophy, anthropology, and logic, you will appreciate this analysis of faith. I think it is the best book on the logic of faith since C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
The End of Men
What if the modern, postindustrial economy is more congenial to women than to men? For the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce has tipped toward women, who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs. Women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools. For every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same. Under age 30, women receive higher income than men, associated with more education. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women. A major veterinary school recently admitted a class 100% female, and professional education is a major determinant of who gets higher income. “The working class is slowly turning into a matriarchy,” Rosin says. Controversial and provocative– a book everyone should read.
Why Nations Fail
The Nobel Prize Winner for Economics in 2025, I regard this is as one of the most important books of the year; a well-researched investigation by highly-qualified scholars demonstrating why people in some nations are prosperous and some are poor. It’s certainly not natural resources, as the authors demonstrate well in their analysis of the dramatic differences between North and South Korea, nor is it a generic explanation of poverty in Africa, as they show in their analysis of Botswana.
Perhaps the reason I like the book so much is because the conclusions are similar to From the Edge of the World, written more than a decade ago in which I identified Botswana as the fastest growing economy in the world, a fact they describe and compare with neighboring Zimbabwe and other African nations.
The greatest value of the book may be in analyzing the causes of prosperity in the United States and Australia, carefully documenting the founding of the U.S. with comparisons to Spanish-dominated South America. The book can be a bit tedious if you don’t enjoy economic history or current economic statistics, but I believe it is OK to skip some of the details and compare founding principles leading to prosperity in the U.S. (which may surprise you) with the direction of the economy currently (which they avoid). Which economist was correct? Keynes or Shumpeter? The authors make no explicit reference to that question, but I urge you not to express your opinion until after you read and reflect on this book.
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
This was not designed to be a textbook about consumer behavior, nor a book about achieving success as an entrepreneur. Yet, it is an excellent analysis of both topics—-all in the context of studying how consumers and entrepreneurs behave causing them to be poor, and what others can do to change that behavior.
The analysis is almost entirely empirical—what works, based on randomized field trials, among impoverished people throughout the world. The authors explain why the poor borrow in order to save, why their children go to school but often do not learn, why they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for drugs they do not need, why they start businesses but do not grow any of them, and many other realities of why the poor make poor decisions. Remember, this book was written based on studies in India, Africa and other parts of the world, but the conclusions are just as relevant in explaining why poor consumers in America make bad decisions about what to eat, buy and do. The authors even analyze why people don’t keep resolutions and make frivolous consumption decisions instead of saving for the future. It is difficult to read this book, even though focused on poor people, without applying the research-based findings to most any consumers—including ourselves. It might sound like a lot of economic theory and scientific analysis, but I think you will have difficulty putting the book down. It is that intriguing.
Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society
If you are the leader of a business, non-profit group, educational institution or any other organization, how do you know which ideas will work and which won’t? There is never any shortage of experts ready to offer their opinion about the best solution to problems. Read this book, and you may never think the same away again about whose opinion to trust. The correct answers arise most reliably from the scientific method, usually establishing cause and effect with Randomized Field Trials (RFT). If you are a long-time marketing researcher or a university professor dependent upon peer-reviewed journals for survival, you probably already understand the scientific approach Manzi commends. If you are not a career researcher, reading this book should convince you, helping you make more objective decisions with fewer mistakes and reliance on the opinion of other people.
A Culture of Growth
How fast will the U.S. economy or any other nations grow in the future? You will have a better understanding of that question and answers to why some nations (and companies) grow faster than others after reading A Culture of Growth, by Joel Mokyr. Some innovations succeed and some fail, and the culture of a nation (or a corporation) plays a major role in the success of innovations. Despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity, why did the Industrial Revolution grow out of Western culture, especially England, instead of Asia? You will find answers in this book, including fascinating insights to the research of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, leading you to ideas to make your own organization more innovative.
Misbehaving
Richard Thaler won a Nobel Prize for Economics. Along with Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely, Thaler introduces readers in Misbehaving to the “new” science of Behavioral Economics. Traditional economics provide precise algorithms to predict how consumer should act, usually precisely wrong. Behavioral Economics are less precise, but more nearly correct. Business leaders who have studied CB course in business schools or read Consumer Behavior may be surprised that economists are just discovering what actually causes consumers to buy products and spend money as they do, but Behavioral Economics offers more realistic forecasts of behavior than traditional, Keynesian Economics, and Thaler provides an easy-to-understand introduction in Misbehaving and his earlier book, Nudge.
Bougeois Equality
A monumental book, but worth reading even if you skip some pages. The subtitle captures what McCloskey documents in the book. How well the people of a nation care about and for each other explains a lot about prosperity. It is not resources that determine the wealth of a nation, and not capital or technology as many people believe. It is ideas and how they are handled as part of a nation’s values, “when ideas start having sex.” The same principles apply to the success of a company, successful entrepreneurs discover. You can read the nature of those values (“virtues”) in her earlier, but shorter book Bougeois Virtues. Call them basic values, constitutional values, biblical values or Puritan values, but the conclusion is the same. It is not the values of the poor or elite socio/economic classes that determine success, but Bourgeois (middle class) values. Prudence predicts poverty or prosperity.
Competing Against Luck
Clayton’s books on innovation and disruptive technologies are classics, ranking along with authors such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and Jim Collins. Competing Against Luck is Christensen’s latest, describing “jobs theory” as a way to understand which new products will be accepted by customers, like “problem recognition,” “need recognition” or benefit analysis in consumer behavior and marketing textbooks. If you are not familiar with jobs theory, this is a quick, insightful introduction to the first step in creating successful and disruptive new products.
