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.
Website

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
• 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.
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 marketer. 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 ……it was all achieved through influence. 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 is not relaxing. One day I will find the pamphlet that the founders of Sun Microsystems published on the theories of influence. It was all derived from Lawrence………..Unfortunately I lost it in the move back home from California.