You need always to work on the improvement of your managerial skills. So, reading management books will give you valuable ideas.
Do you work with people in your company?
Do you manage different projects for your business?
Or, do you want your company to succeed?
If you answer yes to the questions then you will need managerial skills. You will also need leadership skills.
One way to increase your business potential energy in your managerial skills is to find, read and learn from different management books that cover the topics of interest. Here, I want to share the list of the most important managerial books that I think you as an entrepreneur must read if you want to manage your company to success.
The list is not in some type of ranking order.
1. The Lean Startup
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses is something that can increase your business potential energy by implementing lean principles in your small business. The book uses the basis of lean production to help you to create a really innovative company through continuous learning, experimenting, and testing your vision as an entrepreneur. This is one of the best management books that will help you succeed as a startup.
2. Linchpin
Linchpin – Are You Indispensable? Management book, that will change your thinking about everything in your company. The book will open your eyes to look at the things in your company very differently and in correlation with today’s reality. Seth Godin talks about how your managerial and leadership style can make you, your partners, your coworkers, and your employees indispensable. It’s a must-read book for entrepreneurs.
3. StrengthsFinder 2.0
I know that you as an entrepreneur know many things to do. But, do you know what you can do the best. Do you do something that you can do the best? Do you find yourself fixing your shortcomings or your weaknesses instead of developing your strengths? Strengths Finder 2.0 is the management book that can help you find your biggest strengths, develop them and start building on them.
4. Good to Great
Good to Great by Jim Collins is something that must be read by each entrepreneur. Nobody is perfect. But, how your company can achieve enduring greatness from something that can be called good business, mediocre business, or even bad business. This management book will show you why some companies become truly great performers while others remain only good.
Related: Reasons Being An Entrepreneur Is Better Than Employment
5. Thinking Fast and Slow
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is about our thinking, or our mind, and the way we use it in our thinking. The book explains the two systems we use in our thinking process: the first is the fast-thinking system that is based on intuition and emotions, and the second is a slow thinking system based on logic. It is important for you as an entrepreneur to know when you can and when you can’t trust your intuition.
6. The Tipping Point
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell is a book about change that can start from something very small, and transfer the whole of your life, or the whole of your business. This is the tipping point phenomenon that the author explains in the book. It’s a must-read book for entrepreneurs.
7. Start With Why
Think about how many times you come to the great idea to improve your company after asking and answer on one simple question that starts with why, or maybe it is only why. In Start With Why, Simon Sinek provides the framework on the idea that he calls “The Golden Circle”. That idea can help you to build a great business, and it starts with “why”.
8. The E-Myth Revisited
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber will guide you through the process that you need to implement if you want to succeed in all of your business life cycle stages. Another important aspect that you will learn reading this management book is the distinction between working on your business and working in your business.
9. The Speed of Trust
You as an entrepreneur will always need trust around you. You need your customers to trust you. Also, you need your employees to trust you. You need your partners to trust you. Trust is an essential ingredient for each small business. How much quickly you build it, the quicker your business will become successful. The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey is the book that will lead you through the process of creating strong trust around you and your business.
10. Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant is something that can give you many ideas on how to approach your market with something really different, something that will create the new market and the new need for your products and services. The authors called this different and new as a “blue ocean” that you need to create on the market.
