Ten Books to Inspire You As Leader

In my quest to improve my skills as an entrepreneur and leader I’ve read lots of management books over the years. In most cases they’ve utterly failed to make any lasting impression on me; most are badly written, boring, smug, impractical, self-contradictory, too vague, too complicated or just plain wrong.

The exceptions, in my opinion, are the books I’ve selected for you. But why do I feel that so many books let us down as entrepreneurs and leaders?

Many authors of business books are successful business people who know what they did but can’t really explain how; many more are successful in very specific circumstances. The writers of such books advocate very plausible theories gleaned from their experience. But because they are generally based on personal experience, there are as many different versions of business truth as there are dot.com millionaires, folk heroes in charge of the “big” companies or others with a particular axe to grind or religion to sell. Sometimes these theories are endorsed by the press, and other experts, and may even become massively popular. It is sobering then to check the corporate obituaries and count the guru CEOs.

In my experience, few books, lectures, even discussions with successful business people yield any reusable information, because they are based on interpretations of personal experience, received wisdom and war stories.

Examples may be interesting, often informative and may be used as evidence to support a theory. But a model inferred from specific instances cannot be generally applicable, or predictive under different circumstances. The fundamental truths I was searching for, only became obvious when I could consider them in context.

Now, while I recognise the contributions of the likes of Peter Drucker and Tom Peters, I believe we are in a similar state to the one that economists faced in the 20th century. With fundamental principles still to be established for entrepreneurship, we are awaiting the entrepreneurial equivalent of John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. And while we continue to wait, we also continue to lack a framework or set of rules for communication and debate about entrepreneurship.

Nevertheless, there are ten books that I refer to time and time again and which have fundamentally shaped the way I perform as both an entrepreneur and leader.

1) The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

For me, The Tipping Point is a book about how change can be engineered through a word-of-mouth virus. If you want to create a model of how you can execute a viral component of a broader marketing strategy, this is the best starting point.

There are several other books that can add some specifics for internet execution: Unleashing the Idea Virus: How to Turn Your ideas into Marketing Epidemics – Seth Godin and The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word-of-mouth Marketing – Emanuel Rosen

But they do not provide the common framework.
2) Built to Last – Jim Collins

One of my favourite books and, as a serial entrepreneur, one that has had most influence on me. Transforming and creating “life time” organisations is critical to leadership. It is all here!
Website
3) Good to Great – Jim Collins

Great if you want to get an understanding about the stages of building an enterprise. In effect the maturity model for business, this is a wonderful book that also contains an excellent model for extended leadership. A lot of people were pre-occupied about whether this was just a follow up from Built to Last, ignore that and treat it as a separate set of models. Type “good to great” in Google and you will find some interesting companies out there providing services on aspects of the “good to great” model.
4) Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey Moore

If you are building a marketing strategy for a new product or business, this book will give you a clear picture of the phases of re branding/positioning and collateral change you should plan for as the product matures. The Chasm thinking suggests that there are some major changes required in positioning to overcome potential blocks in market penetration. Whilst this is important, it is the overall model that is fantastic. The bell curve adoption lifecycle, as influenced by psychographic profiles, is not Geoffrey Moore’s that has been around for some time.

Do not be put off by the fact that it is supposed to be for technology and discontinuous innovations, in my opinion it works across the board!
5) Inside the Tornado – Geoffrey Moore

And the follow on from Chasm if your company or product has taken off. I think the bowling alley model is “spot on”. I read the rest of Moore’s books while living in California and they left me cold, even though my software company was part of some of the market anecdotes.

Check out the Chasm website for Moore’s consulting company which provides services around the model. I know that the company has moved on but the basic principals are unchanged. I met them in my early days in Silicone Valley, in the late 1990s, and had many contacts who had employed them. Again there is lots of material on the Chasm model, if you spend some time on the internet.
6) Who Moved My Cheese?
- Dr Spencer Johnson

This one is a must for all budding leaders and entrepreneurs. The funniest response I got from our builders was that his life evolved around “Lager Station C”. There is no going back if you embrace this idea and visit it often. If you join a Footdown Fifteen, we will help you with the next step of working out your life contract (with the running shoes still round your neck). When the Bath Fifteen listened to this, they were given a section of cheese to reinforce the thinking. It was a very popular session and much spoken about subsequently.
7) The One Minute Manager – Ken Blanchard

Any leader who is not “consciously competent” with the situational leadership model is letting themselves and their team down. It is as important as that. There are very few people that I have met that execute this naturally. It is an easy read and probably amongst the most valuable leadership books that exist.
8) Eat That Frog! – Brian Tracy

The best book around to help you to manage your goals and priorities. Used in conjunction with Microsoft’s Outlook, or the new Footdown software, the ideas in the book will help you to lead a more focused and efficient life and to get the big things done.
9) SPIN-selling – Neil Rackham

Simply the most influential and life changing model I have come across. Being exposed to this fantastic model helped to accelerate the transition I made from accountant to salesman and after. If you integrate it with the Chasm model, you will have achieved something that you won’t find in books and it will help you understand what marketers should be doing to help the direct or indirect sales force; the salesman’s bible. Read Strategic Selling by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman, if you can add the “blue sheet “ approach, but SPIN should be enough
10) Seven Pillars of Wisdom – T E Lawrence

And finally, for those longer term reads and textual relationships, Lawrence is my most revered leader. The significance – he was never allowed to lead anything; everything he achieved was done through influence and some say he still has not been surpassed in the manner in which he built his version of the Middle East. You will need to think as you read this book as it’s not relaxing bed-time reading.

So, in conclusion, let’s agree that you can dip into most management theories and extract a coherent position of sorts that may help you as both an entrepreneur and leader. The problem is that, in most cases, you will have to sieve out the anecdotal waffle about specific instances in order to extract something that is comprehensible and reusable.

This article was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2011 and is filed under Leadership.

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