10 Great Business Books
I’ll admit it: I don’t love a lot of business books. I find many to be uninspiring and riddled with jargon. These are my “ride or die” exceptions, in order of how much they’ve contributed to my career:
❤️ Why I Love It: I was introduced to this book at HGTV, and it was a game changer for how I lead. It taught me that most companies are chasing the wrong KPIs. If you want to chase the right KPI’s and cultivate a culture of accountability, alignment and performance, this is the book for you. This book is how I took HGTV from the #17 network to #4 in 18 months.
Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs by Uri Levine.
❤️ Why I Love It: We live in an engineering-driven world where we tend to build products and solutions prematurely without truly understanding customers’ problems and pain points. Uri Levine, founder of Waze, gives us the ultimate primer on getting forensic with the problem so we can build indispensable products. This is for anyRadical one with an entrepreneurial spirit who wants to drive a business forward with thoughtfully and with resolve.
❤️ Why I Love It: Years ago, I was a new executive at a small television network. I knew I had to network my way to my next job, but I loathed the transactional, almost sleazy nature of what I viewed as traditional networking. This book taught me how to start from a place of serving others so I could network as my authentic self. I credit this book with helping me land my job at HGTV and my first CEO role.
Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott.
❤️ Why I Love It: I’ve always been a person who’s direct and I care about people deeply. In traditional management circles, we’re taught those two things are contradictory. Thanks to Kim Scott, former Google and Apple superstar, I now understand exactly how these two traits are complementary and how to lead compassionately and create cohesion.
Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People by Vanessa Van Edwards.
❤️ Why I Love It: I’ve always found the emotional intelligence parts of business to be the most difficult. I wish I would have discovered human behavior hacker Vanessa Van Edwards brilliance much earlier in my career. In this book she teaches critical skills like how to talk to anyone and how to read faces.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap & Others Don’t by Jim Collins.
❤️ Why I Love It: I read this years ago when I was a management consultant, and it fundamentally changed the way I think about business. Even though this book was written 25 years ago, it is still very much applicable to business today. It takes a very hands-on, case study approach to outlining what makes a business truly transcendent.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
❤️ Why I Love It: Be prepared: this book starts out pretty bland/dense. It’s worth the slog. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman details the two systems of thought that drive our decision-making and how to manage those systems for the best outcomes. I use what I learned in this book daily in my executive coaching practice.
The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen.
❤️ Why I Love It: True innovation is rare at most companies because it’s hard to nurture given the constraints on a typical business. And yet…disruption is the name of the game these days. Companies have to be agile enough to roll with whatever comes their way. Better yet, we need to predict what’s coming. Christensen gives us an enlightening and relevant roadmap for avoiding the pitfalls of complacency.
The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.
❤️ Why I Love It: Hey, a lot of people make it to the executive ranks without having an MBA. I am one of them. And while we can learn a lot on the job, it helps to have frameworks to make sense of things. Josh Kaufman’s book should be on everyone’s bookshelf. I still refer to it often.
❤️ Why I Love It: Right about now, you’re questioning why this title is on a list of business books. That’s simple: this is one of the most impactful books I’ve read in my 52 years on earth. It made me a better leader because I started to reflect on my own behavior as a white woman in the workplace. I thought I was an ally. I was a bumper sticker ally. I said all the right things and didn’t actively advocate for women in the global majority given the power I had. Workplaces are full of hostility, bullying and mobbing. A lot of that happens at the hands of white women like me. I recommend this for anyone who’s interested in becoming an anti-racist at work and in life.
