These are the books which inspired us to give a start to GOOD2WORK project. The initial content of our site and original concept of the resource are to a great extent based on the ideas and stories we found in this literature. We studied the first part of the list and are now working on the second one. We hope it will be a never-ending activity as we expect participants of the Community to suggest new titles and authors and to comment on them.
Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, Screw It. Let’s Do It. What a life! Branson is a natural role model for those who is not content with what and where they are, and need to move further. If you are among them, you’ll find it very inspirational. Life and business lessons, even simple ones, illustrated through Branson’s own experiences (his autobiography Loosing My Virginity tells the same stories in more details), can persuade almost anyone that there’s really nothing impossible if you’ve got energy and will to “screw it and do it”.
Jack Welch, Jack: Straight from the Gut. Jack Welch’s book is a generous gift for those who want to grow as a leader. He is sharing his own experience and wisdom through telling instructive stories about problem solving, performance, critical mistakes, persistence, winning over circumstances and many other important things which every manager have to deal with every day on his way to the true leadership.
Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, Beth Axelrod, The War for Talent. McKinsey’s research of the most successful companies proved that talented people are the most critical resource in the new economy. The consultants studied best practices in attracting and retaining talents and collected all them in one book. The book’s title has already become a definition for the global tendency: companies all over the world, including developing countries, are fighting for the best employees, because this is the only way to survive in highly competitive environment.
Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company. This book, written by one of the best CEOs, is focused on Andy Groves’s own concept of a "strategic inflection point" – a period in company’s life when its fundamentals are going to change. This is the moment when you can either ruin your business or start making it even much more successful. Grove describes critical moments in Intel’s life and reflects on what he learned from them.
Ingvar Kamprad, Bertil Torekull, Leading By Design: The Ikea Story. A thoroughly detailed account of the Ikea founder’s life and work does not contain many workplace competency stories about Ingvar Kamprad. But it gives very good idea of the unlikeliest knowledge based business built as a family firm with patriarchal corporate culture. Yet it did not prevent company founded in the thick forests of Swedish Smaland to become world’s leading furniture store with over 40 000 workers in more than 30 countries.
Howard Schultz, Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. This book is an exciting and inspiring Howard Schultz’s story about building a company “with a soul” and its further transformation into global empire. It is not only about business and revenues; it is also about love, passion, strength of the human spirit, following the dream, and breaking through the barriers that seem to be insuperable.
Dee Hock, One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization. The founder of Visa International, Dee Hock appears to be an original narrator, telling the story of the creation of an absolutely new and phenomenally successful organization in philosophic and ironic language. The main idea of the book is a birth of a new type of organization Hock calls “chaordic” (a hybrid of two words: chaos and order) and a new type of leadership, implying that everyone leads and follows simultaneously.
Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America. There is much to learn from the life story of the current world’s biggest company founder. Reading this book you’ll make certain how important is to never rest content, always look for new ideas and never stop learning from everything and everyone, love to compete and not to dwell on reverses, and, of course, value a dollar and work hard.
Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In this book Stephen Covey shows that many of the principles that we used to see as religious in reality are the most effective way of living and interacting in business and beyond. He describes the levels of self-understanding and self-development that each individual should pass through to become a highly effective whole-hearted person. It serves like a map to find the shortest way to the place you really want to come.
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave. Published in 1980 the book is one of the most important visionary works of late ХХ century, which served as introduction to the ХХI century for millions of readers. Among other important things Toffler predicted the rise of the prosumer and heralded the change from manufacturing goods to knowledge-production and information-processing as the primary economic activity.
Alan Deutschman, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. The book is an expressive portrait of Apple Inc. CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, his biography based on interviews with nearly 100 of his associates and friends. Alan Deutschman offers an interesting and vivid look at one of the most contradictory persons of the modern business, "a figure who was ubiquitous as a symbol of his times but little known as a human being."
Michael Dell, Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry (Collins Business Essentials). Direct from Dell is a fascinating story about how to start a company in a dorm room at the university with less than $1000 and build it into an industry powerhouse with a market capitalization of more than $100 billion. The book is also notable for the company’s founder and CEO Michael Dell tells us not about what he sells, but how he sells it, describing in details his pioneer PC direct-selling model.
Thom Peters, Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence. First published in 1982, this book remains one of the most widely read business books ever. Although it may seem that 25 years is too long for a book on management to stay actual from the practical point of view, the eight common themes the authors found to be responsible for success of the leading companies of that time can be easily apply to the modern management activity. Especially it concerns such “eternal” business topic as the importance of human capital or as Peters called “productivity through people”.
Jack Welch, Winning
Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, The Leadership Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise
Bill Gates, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446675962
Vince Lombardi, The Lombardi Rules
Vince Lombardi, What It Takes to Be #1 : Vince Lombardi on Leadership
Klaus Kobjoll, Daniel Wagen, Motivaction. Begeisterung ist übertragbar
Susan Drake, Michelle Janette Gulman, and Sara Roberts, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers
Alfred Sloan, My Years with General Motors
Doug Garr, IBM Redux : Lou Gerstner and the Business Turnaround of the Decade
Jennifer Viegas, Pierre Omidyar: The Founder of Ebay (Internet Career Bios)
Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon, iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
Ann Byers, Jeff Bezos: The Founder of Amazon.com (Internet Career Biographies)
Janet Lowe, Bill Gates Speaks
Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, and George Roth, The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
William Joyce, Nitin Nohria, What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success
James M. Citrin, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction
Thomas J. Neff, James M. Citrin, Lessons from the Top: The 50 Most Successful Business Leaders in America--and What You Can Learn From Them
Justin Menkes, Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have
These are the books we still are studying:
Tom Peters, Re-imagine!
Tom Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties
Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution
Tom Peters, The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness
Stephen R. Covey, Principle Centered Leadership
Stephen R. Covey, First Things First
Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness: Miniature Edition
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane: Essays on Irrational Organizations and Their Leaders
Manfred F.R.Kets De Vries, The Happiness Equation
Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove, Swimming Across: A Memoir
Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
James M. Citrin, Zoom: How 12 Exceptional Companies Are Navigating the Road to the Next Economy
Thomas J. Neff, James M. Citrin, You're in Charge, Now What?: The 8 Point Plan
Guy Kawasaki, Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People
Guy Kawasaki, The Macintosh Way
Hank Stringer, Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business
Steve Farber, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership
Maxine Clark, Amy Joyner, The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart
Louis V. Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change
Steven Spielberg, Steven Spielberg: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Henry Ford, My Life and Work
Alvin Toffler, Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler, Revolutionary Wealth
Michael E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance
Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy
Richard Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
