Best Business Books and topics for talking with executives

Best Business Books and topics for talking with executives Best business books Reading and consuming knowledge is one of the best ways to keep up to date and show your leaders interest in your field. Best business books An MBA friend recently entered the workforce and asked me to recommend some good business books to read. He is fortunate because his job puts him in situations where he spends extended periods of time with  executives. He figured that reading any books would help him with his new career, and consequently wasn’t asking for anything in particular. At first, I was stumped. His request was so broad I didn’t know which direction to point him.  I didn’t think I could effectively pick a book that would meet his natural curiosity and capture his  interest. With this in mind, I took a different direction on his request.     I explained that I didn’t really know what he was looking for but I had an idea that would hopefully solve his request. My thought was to provide a list of books that would enable him to  hold interesting conversations with CEO’s and other MBA’s. Some are must read but there should be a few that will give you a different way to think about best business books.  With this in mind, I put together the following  list of books that I believe will give him talking points so he can hold conversations with his executive level customers:   Instead of learning about spreadsheets, how to operate a business, or biographys on business leaders, my thought was to recommend books he could share a common language with when talking with colleagues, mentors, and execs in the business world.  Most of his peer MBA’s and equivalents will have read the following books and when you say 10,000 hours, SMART Goals, or “bottom 10 percent”, they will know exactly what you mean. Reading the following books will also show your manager and VP’s that you are pushing yourself to learn and have a better attitude than your colleagues.     One great practice that our CEO has implemented is promoting business books within the company. If he has read a good business book, he will talk about it at our weekly all  company meeting and offer to buy it for anyone in the company that is interested. With books directly relevant to what we are working on, we have made the books required reading for the entire management staff and optional for any individual contributors. This way, everyone is familiar with the lexicon when we are referring to specific examples listed in the books. Of course, we offer the  business books  in any format you are interested in, whether this is Kindle, Hardback, CD, etc. Who wouldn’t want to read what the CEO of their company is currently reading? Asking an opinion of your CEO on a business book is always a great icebreaker and a way to show you are pushing yourself. So with this mentality in mind, I put together a short list of books that most execs  and MBA’s (aka decision makers) will be familiar with. Again, this isn’t a list of the top business books to read.  This isn’t a list of specific learning’s and isnt a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.  My hope is that being familiar with these you will be able to ask interesting questions of the execs and decision makers in your world.  Dont we all want to ask interesting questions of the senior people in our lives? I know I missed a number of classics, so please add to the list in the comments below.   I  just  finished  reading The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, a  well-respected CEO turned VC. This book was written by a CEO, about CEO experiences and the intended audience was other CEO’s.  Along the way, it gained a cult following within the business and startup community. Being a CEO is hard and Horowitz goes into the trials and tribulations about his job as a CEO and insight into his never give up attitude which gets him through. This book delivers real-life lessons everyone can learn from. Millionaire Next Door:  The book I wish Mrs. HRNasty would read. The difference in day-to-day habits that you wouldnt suspect between millionaires and those living paycheck to paycheck.  Why do millionaires drive 10-year-old cars? This book takes a groundbreaking look at the wealthy and reveals that many millionaires live quietly among non-millionaires. You wont find any lifestyles of the rich and famous profiles in this book; just ordinary folks who rolled up their sleeves, worked and saved hard. How the everyday person  can become a millionaire.  I am confident most  managers would  prefer to hire this mentality. I am a Gladwell fanboy so anything from Malcolm Gladwell would be very high on the list. Outliers  would be one of the first books I recommend, and if you havent already read this, I am confident  you will find it a fascinating read. Gladwell proposes a very sound theory for “what makes high achievers different”. I find everything by Gladwell entertaining and thought-provoking.   How to Win Friends and Influence People:   Every successful sales person and CEO has read this book. I have preached throughout the blog that despite your crappy manager, your career is your own responsibility. This book is a great first step to understanding how you can take the initiative in personal and professional relationships and control your destiny.       Never Eat Alone  by Keith Ferrazzi. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships. Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps needed to reach out to connect with the colleagues, friends, and associates. This is the networkers bible. Jack Welch and the GE way:  Although some may feel this is dated, your VP probably read this classic.  Jack Welch took GE to greatness. In one of the biggest and most traditional Fortune companies, Welch was picked to lead GE. He was a proponent of cutting the bottom 10% every year and GE has one of the most talent-rich management benches in the world. The No Asshole Rule:  Working  in HR, and I want to spread this word as much as possible. Not so much so that assholes are not hired, but just as much so that assholes (and they know who they are) frickin change their ass hole ways. I don’t care how smart you are, assholes will be dinosaurs.   The World is Flat    by Thomas L. Friedman. With so many third world countries becoming industrial, your phone calls to your phone carrier are now going over seas.  Even your doctors reports on your check up are being written overseas. This explains how competition isnt just local but global for every  industry and why more jobs are going overseas. The message for me as an HR pro-am  and someone collecting a paycheck was that as employees, we need to be thinking about how we can improve our individual productivity if we want to save our jobs.   Because I am a superfan, I have to include anything by Brad Feld. Brad is a well-respected VC, and started his career as a software developer, so he isn’t your traditional banking VC. Most of his books are broken up into chapters that can be read independently of each other. I especially like “Do more faster”. This is a book that interviews a number of start-up CEO’s and interviews them for lessons learned the hard way.   Books on perfection (and food) One of my all-time favorite books is “The Soul of a Chef”, written by Michael Ruhlman as he observes the rigorous 3-day Certified Master Chef exam of the Culinary Institute of America. In this book, he also writes about his observations as he hangs out with Chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry. For myself, this book goes into “What causes chefs to strive for absolute perfection”?  What does it really take to achieve high levels of accomplishment? Jiro dreams of Sushi,  available in book and video format is a fascinating at into one mans quest  be “perfect”. I recommended the book / video to our executive team and everyone found it fascinating. So much so that it was agreed that if any of us makes it big,  we take each other  to Japan and order sushi from Jiro. After 50 years, Jiro, the sushi chef featured in the book doesn’t feel he has mastered his craft of preparing sushi despite a 6 month reservation wait and a $500.00 price tag on a  meal at his restaurant. If you work for a perfectionist, this is a must read.     Business books for networking Habits of highly effective people  by Steven R Covey. Nothing more need be said about this one. If you havent heard of this one, I cant help you.   How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie is required reading in schools and businesses alike. If you are wondering how you can strengthen your leadership skills, this is a great place to start. Standard reading for most High Performer programs at Fortune companies.   Classic business  books The thought process behind this list is that these books are 100 to 500 years old. These are da real classics. If an idea has survived this long, there has got to be something to it. New ideas come and go every day.  Everybody has an opinion and a theory including myself. I have philosophies around interviewing, and hopefully, they will be surviving in the next decade. Read the classics first as a baseline and read what your CEO and execs have read.   48 laws of Power by Robert Green was a  New York Times bestseller, although this book was published in the year 2000, it is based on the analysis of the powerful  spanning a period of 3000 years. This book draws on the philosophies of Machiavelli and Sun Tzu to Kissenger and PT Barnum and distills power to 48 laws.   The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli  (1532) was originally written as an instruction guide for governing Princes in the 1500’s this is probably one of the most famous book on politics. Anytime you work with a group of 3 or more, there will be politics. Art of War by Sun Tzu written in the 5th century BC is a  classic’s classic and no list of business books would be complete without it. This is a military treatise written by a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician. 13 chapters each devoted to one aspect of warfare. Recommended reading for all US military Intelligence personnel and required reading for all CIA officers. Many business books have been written applying lessons from this book to corporate strategy for competitive business situations.   Book on Teamwork Because I grew up in the shadow of the University of Washington and this book is making a comeback, I am also including The Boys in the Boat, which I think is being made into a movie.   This is the  true story of the 1932 UW rowing team that went to the Olympics. You dont have to be into rowing to get this feel good story  about underdogs building a winning team.  I have read this one multiple times.   I know that there are a lot of other great business books out there. Please take a moment to share your must read in the comments below and recommend your favorites.   See you at the after party, HRNasty nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone who is good at something. “He has a nasty forkball. If you felt this post was valuable please subscribe here. I promise no spam,