Best Business Books List
I’ve done a major overhaul and sweep of my Best Business Books list.
I use business books to get the edge and get ahead. In fact, in addition to quotes and people, books are one of my greatest sources of knowledge. My book recommendations are hand-crafted indexes of the books that I’ve found to be the most useful. I spend a lot of money on books each month. By a lot, I can safely say that there have been several extended periods in my life where I’ve spent a few hundred dollars on books each month.
I’ve included new gems as well as timeless classics. The most important aspect of the list though, is that I organized the books by meaningful business topics. One of the issues I usually find with book lists is that they are just flat lists, and it’s hard to know what topic they cover. While I like the simplicity of a flat list, I think it’s way more valuable to have a list that organizes the books by categories so that you know what the focus is.
Here are the topics I used for my best business books list:
- Branding
- Business, Business Models, and Value Chains
- Change and Change Management
- Competition
- Culture
- Customer Focus, Service Delivery
- CxO, Executive
- Decision Making
- Effectiveness
- Entrepreneurs, Start Ups
- Excellence
- Execution
- Finance
- Globalization
- Home Business
- Innovation
- Knowledge Management, Performance Management, Training
- Management
- Marketing, Sales
- Motivation
- Negotiation
- Organizational Design
- Outsourcing
- Productivity
- Strategy, Purpose
- Strengths
- Survival, Longevity
- Systems
- Teamwork
- Trust
- Vision, Mission, and Values
- Work-Life Balance
As you can probably tell, it’s a pretty comprehensive list. I’m not a fan of piece-meal lists. I wanted this list to reflect many of the best business books that I actually use at work that make a difference. For example, Blue Ocean got me focused on whitespace opportunities, Go Put Your Strengths to Work helped me refocus on playing to my strengths, and The Spider and the Starfish taught me the power of using principles and values in a federated way to create meaningful change and empower people and teams.
This is a serious list for the avid business book reader.
Please enjoy my Best Business Books list and may it serve you as it has served me.
By the way, if there is a great business book that you have read, that I need to know about, please be sure to share with me. I’m always on the prowl for the next best business book that will change the game.