Best Management Books

1.  One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, is a remarkable book about management. It is about a young man who is in search of an effective manager and is willing to work for one.

In his search, he meets some ‘autocratic’ managers who are only concerned about the results. Their organizations gained while their people lost. He also meets ‘democratic’ managers who are concerned only about the people. Their people gained while their organizations lost. He was looking for an effective manager who was interested in the people as well as the results so that both the people and the organization gained in his management.

Then the young man comes across a manager who calls himself “the one minute manager” as it took very little time for him to get big results from people.

2.  Good to Great by Jim Collins

This book addresses a single question: can a good company become a great company, and if so, how? Based on a five-year research project comparing teams that made a leap to those that did not, Good to Great shows that greatness is not primarily a function of circumstance, but largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline. This book discusses concepts like Level 5 Leadership, First Who (first get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to drive it), and the Flywheel.

3.  The Goal Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt

The Goal is written as a piece of fiction. The main character is Alex Rogo, who manages a production plant owned by UniCo Manufacturing, where everything is always behind schedule and things are looking dire. At the beginning of the book, Bill Peach, a company executive, tells Alex that he has three months to turn operations at his plant around from being unprofitable and unreliable to being successful.  His distant acquaintance, Jonah helps him solve the company's problems through a series of telephone calls and short meetings. 

The book goes on to point out the role of bottlenecks (constraints) in a manufacturing process, and how identifying them not only makes it possible to reduce their impact, but also yields a useful tool for measuring and controlling the flow of materials. Alex and his team identify the bottlenecks in their process and immediately begin to implement changes to help speed up capacity. 

In the book, Jonah teaches Alex Rogo by using the Socratic method.  Throughout the book, whenever a meeting or telephone call dialogue happens with Jonah he poses a question to Alex Rogo or a member of his crew which in turn causes them to talk amongst themselves to come up with a solution to their problem. 

4.  Leading at a Higher Level by Ken Blanchard

Leaders in any realm of life can become self-serving when the driving reason for being in business is based solely on profit. While profit is a legitimate goal, neglecting to see leadership as part of a higher calling diminishes the capacity to influence others and impact the greater good.

Leading at a Higher Level examines the concept of leading with a higher purpose, which requires a compelling vision and a philosophy that the development of people is equally important to that of performance. Author Ken Blanchard challenges readers to lead by asking themselves who they are, what they stand for, and how they can take the initiative even if they don’t have position power.

5.  Deep Dive by Rich Horwath

85% of executive leadership spends less than an hour a month discussing strategy so how can they be good at it?  Deep Dive examines the world of business creativity, and the unseen opportunity that resides in practicing the art of strategy.

What “Deep Dive” does is illustrate how to maximize the productivity of a brain storming session and eliminate any unnecessary risk when implementing a new strategy. Horwath does this by familiarizing readers to concepts that surround the planning of new ideas.

There are so many concepts introduced in “Deep Dive” that it can be daunting, and sometimes it doesn’t seem that enough attention is given to one concept before another is thrown at you.  PEST Analyses, Business Driver Matrixes, Competitive Strength Assessments, SWOT Alignments, and the countless other tools are presented. 

6.  Helping People Win at Work by Ken Blanchard and Gary Ridge

Most performance review systems and classroom grading models are based on a normal distribution or bell curve. When plotted on graph paper, this curve resembles the shape of a bell with a bulging middle that’s tapered on both ends or “tails.” This shape represents the majority of individual performers who cluster around the middle of the “bell” with select higher and lower performers scattered in its respective tails.

Grading on the curve forces evaluators to assign rankings in a highest-to-lowest order measured against the entire data set, which may seem fair at first. But is it really? This is the question raised in Ken Blanchard’s latest book Helping People Win at Work. Blanchard postulates that the generally-accepted performance review process is flawed.

Blanchard goes even further when he discusses his years as a college professor. During his tenure he would give students a copy of the final exam during the first week of class. He would then spend the entire course helping them develop answers for those questions ––virtually ensuring every student earned an “A” grade.

Most of the remainder of the book, co-authored by Garry Ridge, CEO of the WD-40 Company, which makes a line of consumer packaged goods, is comprised of Ridge’s musings and the application of Blanchard’s leadership principles within the WD-40 Company.

Ridge shares how he implemented a performance review system at his company called “Don’t Grade My Paper, Help Me Get an ‘A’,” which was based on Blanchard’s teaching philosophy. Ridge states how his organization’s employee evaluation program strives to promote a sense of belonging, caring candor, continual learning and dogged persistence, as well as willingness to attempt risk in the face of failure. 

In the final section of the book, Blanchard outlines “12 Simple Truths” gleaned from his own previous writings and Ridge’s experience leading the WD-40 Company. These truths comprise varying conceptual combinations of performance planning, proactive coaching, respectful dialogue, positive reinforcement and situational leadership.

7.  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a fictionalized account of a very typical management challenge. The fictitous company is DecisionTech, a 150 person software start-up in Silicon Valley. The company, thanks to the efforts of Jeff the company's firstCEO, is well funded and staffed with top level executives. However, the company is lagging behind several competitors and the board has replaced Jeff with Kathryn. Kathryn immediately begins a careful review of the situation and determines that the senior management team isn't much of a team at all. Utilizing a series of exercises and off-site meetings, Kathryn begins an aggressive team building (and team thinning). 

In time, Kathryn observes the personality traits of her team and their short comings clearly illustrate the 5 dysfunctions of a typical team:

•  Teams need trust to communicate honestly and openly  (Absence of Trust)

•  Fear of Conflict

•  Teams must commit together  (Lack of Commitment)

•  Avoidance of Accountability

•  Inattention to results

This book also includes pages of worksheets, self-assessments and more. This work is a quick one or two hour read.

8.  The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey

Trust is so basic to business that it is rarely discussed in an analytical and accessible way.  The book “The Speed of Trust” offers critical advice for managers on how to actively manage trust in order to accelerate growth and reduce costs, while avoiding mis-steps. The more trust within a company, the faster it can move with lower costs.  

The speed at which you can assess and extend trust determines how fast your business can grow because it affects every relationship. That is, relationships with employees, new hires, business associates and customers. 

9.  The Steve Jobs Way by Jay Elliot

In The Steve Jobs Way, Jay Elliot gives the reader the opportunity of seeing Steve Jobs as only his closest associates have ever seen him, and to learn what has made him capable of creating tools so extraordinary that they have remade three industries and transformed the way we create, consume, and communicate with each other. Jay Elliot worked side by side with Steve as Senior Vice President of Apple and brings us his deep insider perspective of Steve's singular iLeadership style, which encompasses four major principles: product, talent, organization, marketing. Elliot shares the lessons that come out of Steve's intuitive approach to show how the creative and technological brilliance of iLeadership can be utilized to drive breakthroughs in any organization, irrespective of size.

10.  Innovate Like Edison by Michael Gelb

Edison didn't just invent the incandescent light, he envisioned and created a system for lighting the entire world. His systems included the means to fund, produce, distribute, monitor, market, and continuously improve his inventions. He did the same with the phonograph and moving pictures, launching the modern entertainment industry.

Edison began all his innovation efforts by asking himself these questions: "What needs do people have that I can fulfill? What trend or trends are present here? What opportunities do they present? What are the current gaps in the marketplace? What is the insight that can lead me to create greater value in this segment? How can I leverage what I know about this category or industry that makes sense for my laboratory and my brand name? How can I test the efficacy of my idea?"

Edison looked for trends through his reading and networking. He would note places where he thought something was missing or areas where he felt the quality, efficiency, or technology might be improved. Using hypotheses he developed about each trend, he would work on ways of fleshing them out further himself or assign a team to the task. Whatever the project, Edison focused on how he could deliver the greatest possible value to the marketplace. Of course, Edison did more than just develop innovations by following trends; he ultimately created trends through his innovations. 

11.  Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

One of my favorite books on productivity is Eat That Frog by self-help guru Brian Tracy. The main idea behind the book is that if you do your most important task (MIT) first thing in the morning, the rest of the day is going to be easy in comparison. In the book, Brian Tracy calls it “eating your frog” and he got that from the saying, “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!”

Your frog is the most important task. Once you get that out of the way, the other tasks are going to be easy to finish. Plus you set the tone for the rest of the day that work will get done. Now he mentions it in the context of beating procrastination.  I like that approach a lot, and I have used this method with success. By doing the task that you will most likely procrastinate on first, it is relatively simple to do the other tasks because they aren’t as bad in comparison to that task you first did.

12.  Great by Choice by Jim Collins

Collins's new book tackles the question of how to steer a company to lasting success in an environment characterized by change, uncertainty and even chaos.  Collins devotes a whole chapter to pursuing a "bullets-then-cannonballs" approach to competition. The book is built around the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, the two men who set out separately, in October 1911, to become the first explorers to reach the South Pole. Amundsen won the race by setting ambitious goals for each day's progress but also by being careful not to overshoot on good days or undershoot on bad ones, a unique discipline. Scott, by contrast, overreached on the good days and fell apart on the bad, mirroring the control companies in "Great by Choice."

The authors find Amundsen-style discipline in a number of notable companies including Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, who refused to play the analysts' game of "predicting" quarterly earnings and made Progressive the first SEC-company to publish monthly financial statements so that analysts could follow actual results instead. Another disciplined leader is Andy Grove, who was willing to take decisive action at Intel, such as abandoning the business of memory chips in 1985, but only after immersing himself thoroughly in the evidence of a changed marketplace. Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, the authors say, was always preparing for the next recession even when none was in sight.

13.  Start with WHY by Simon Sinek

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and moer profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?

People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.

In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way — and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit— those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?

Starting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire. And the people who follow them don't do so because they have to; they follow because they want to.

Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.

14.  Traction by Gino Wickman

This book is not another silver bullet management book or flavor-of-the month strategy.  It’s based on real-world experience, practical wisdom and time less truths.  Most business leaders experience frustration based on:

•  Lack of control:  you don’t have enough control over your time, market or your company. Instead of controlling the business, the business is controlling you.

•  People:  you’re frustrated with your employees, customers, suppliers etc. They don’t seem to listen, understand you or follow through with their actions. You’re not on the same page.

•  Profit:  managing day to day profitability is difficult.

•  The ceiling:  growth has stopped. No Matter what you do, you can’t seem to break through and get to the next level. You feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next.

•  Nothing’s working: you’ve tried various strategies and quick-fix remedies.  None have worked for long, and as a result, your staff has become numb to new initiatives. You’re spinning your wheels and you need traction to move again.

This book contains all the tools and components that make up the Entrepreneurial Operations System (EOS). EOS is a holistic, self-sustaining system that addresses the six aspects of business.  

15.  How to be a Fierce Competitor by Jeffrey J. Fox

Economic downturns separate the winning companies from the struggling. And as best-selling author Jeffrey J. Fox shows, tough times also give solid companies, strong managers, and potential rainmakers the opportunity to seize market share. In this eminently readable, practical resource for business leaders and managers, Fox explains exactly how the savvy few who rise to the top stay focused and alert, get new market share, hire good recently fired talent, increase investments into customer service, speed innovation, train all customer facing people, make acquisitions, get rid of underperformers, build brand names, pay for measurable performance, and lots more.