The Best Business Books (and Some Surprises) To Fill Up Your Shelf
Fresh out of ideas, looking for a bit of inspiration or guidance, or maybe just a bit of enlightenment? You’ve come to the right place. Here at MoneySoft we are all about providing our readership with the tools they need to see their business flourish. This time on the blog we are running down some of the best business books for your shelf.
Getting More – Stuart Diamond
Looking to beef up your negotiation tactics from what we discussed last time on the blog? How about taking a look at what Google has been using to train their company worldwide? Then check out Getting More from Stuart Diamond.
Diamond takes a differing approach from most, challenging commonly held beliefs about negotiating that might just flip the way you handle it. Where older tomes (and indeed our last blog) talk all about power dynamics and leverage, Diamond starts with the understanding that the other party’s perceptions and emotions should be respected from the get-go, with negotiating working towards them.
It might not be the perfect solution for every negotiation, especially if you’re dealing with a shrewd old-school businessman, but it may be just what you need to seal the deal. It bears knowing how to do it before you need it.
But negotiating isn’t the only place our conversations could use reinforcement.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High – Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
You might think the majority of your most profitable conversations take place in negotiations – and those are profitable, no doubt- but the day to day interactions in the company are valuable by magnitudes. When every member of a team can approach each other and have a direct, honest conversation without fear of making matters worse, problems get solved.
Crucial Conversations is a great tool for those who don’t traditionally spend their days in high stakes negotiations. It can help them approaching difficult conversations between each other, learn to be persuasive rather than abrasive, and take unpleasant emotions into a powerful, productive dialogue between colleagues.
Consider getting this for the other workers in your office this holiday!
Getting Things Done – David Allen
We’ve thoroughly reinforced our ability to persuade and to get what we want from our conversations, but what about all the rest of our time? No doubt there are some inefficiencies in your workflow or day-to-day operations. In steps Getting Things Done.
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a time management method developed by David Allen, a productivity consultant. The crux of it is this: move planned projects and tasks our of your mind, recording them externally. This frees up your mental load so to speak, allowing your mind to focus on tasks at hand rather than keeping those other To-Dos on fast recall. Think of it like tabs in your browser window. When you have only one tab open your computer runs faster. When you keep 40+ open so you can quickly jump between them, the computer’s resources are spread a bit too thin for optimal work.
Don’t just take our word for it! The journal Long Range Planning found science supports the GTD techniques.
Dune – Frank Herbert
Now that you have some of the best business books filling yours and your employees’ shelves, maybe you should throw some fiction on there. And why not one of the grand daddy’s of science fiction with Frank Herbert’s Dune.
The novel from 1965 is all about a feudal interstellar power struggle between noble houses who rule not kingdoms, but planetary systems. It examines topics as wide-ranging as environmentalism to heroism and how people perceive and use myth. It packs a wallop.
If you are going to read one piece of fiction, Dune delivers the most bang for your buck. Not only is it a monumental and compelling work of science fiction but it delivers incredibly compelling philosophical arguments amount the nature of heroes, prophecy, and the kind of leadership we should think twice about following.
Imagine running your business with prescience? You’d never make a bad deal!
Get your hands on these fine examples of what the best business books have to offer, and temper it with a bit of fiction while you’re at it. No bookshelf should be all business.
Happy Holidays from all of us at Money Soft, if you’re looking to start 2019 off on the right foot, take a look at our software that is guaranteed to save you time, money, and guaranteed to save you time, streamline your workflow and eliminate the hassles of Excel and other software.