Recommended reading
The problems encountered in starting, growing and running a company have been encountered by thousands of people before.
Fortunately dozens of successful CEOs and business leaders have written down their lessons learned in book form. These books teach us almost every important aspect of running a business and managing people.
While there are hundreds of such books, the following are some of my favorites.
Reading list
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Title |
Description |
Synopsis |
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Companies can become good using the hard skills outlined in the books above. To become great, a company must become curious and open to learning. This book shows how to do that. |
https://www.skipprichard.com/15-commitments-of-conscious-leadership/ |
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Gives you a framework for communicating feedback effectively. |
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Excellent recruiting process that maximizes the likelihood of hiring A players only, and then ensuring their success at the company. |
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How to live a more objective and principled life. Seeking the truth and being curious about possibilities. |
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Personal productivity; describes using pen/paper, simply translate that to Evernote or another electronic tool. Using this system will make you sleep better. It takes several days to fully implement the system, but is very much worth that investment. |
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Simple reporting structure that works. Simple enough that you can have all your team members read it. I recommend that you do. (Some of it is obviously dated. Ignore those parts.) |
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The classic tech management book. A lot more detail than 1-Minute Manager, but essentially the same structure. |
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Says how great High Output Management is, and then talks about what to do in some very specific and ugly situations that no other books discuss. |
https://booksummaries.co/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things-82dd119d5b86#.nbmj3hot6 |
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Painful, but very necessary step-by-step guide to determining who your real customer is, what solution they want, and how to market and sell to them. If you only read and apply one of these books, make it this one. |
http://tech.co/disciplined-entrepreneurship-bill-aulet-2013-08 |
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Ostensibly about negotiation, but really about how to create deep connection and trust quickly, which is the key to an excellent relationship with your three key constituents: customers (sales), employees (management) and investors (fundraising). This is the best book on sales that I have found. |
https://github.com/mgp/book-notes/blob/master/never-split-the-difference.markdown |
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Explains Adler's philosophy, a way of taking back control of your emotions and changing your outlook on life. |
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The Tactical Guide to Company Building. Outlines a lot of useful processes for company building. Inspired this handbook! |
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnwl-dwqx5xl0s65DE3wO8/edit |