1. The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts, 1995) is a useful book in offering a clarifying way of identifying what your business is about and the fundamental value proposition to customers.  The book identifies three main business models, low-cost (think Walmart), technical innovator (think Intel), and customerintimate (think Airborne Express, which situated shipping staff inside its larger clients warehouses.  A business needs to pick one of the fundamental models as its primary although, obviously, the other two aspects need attention, as well.

2. The Five Temptation of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, imprint of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, 1998) is a book that offers a very simple description of the key things that CEOs can do to be successful in running their businesses.  The book proposes that CEOs need to:
choose trust over vulnerability (i.e., own up to mistakes and cultivate challenges to your thinking and ideas); choose conflict over harmony (i.e., principle-based argument about the needs of the business rather than avoiding discussion of tough issues); choose clarity over certainty (i.e., take clear, decisive action on critical issues rather than waiting for all the data to be obtained and analyzed); choose accountability over popularity (i.e., make the tough decisions required for the best interests of the business, its customers, and its people); and choose results over status (i.e., focus on the good of the company vs. your own ego).

3. Good to Great by Jim Collins (HarperBusiness, imprint of Harper Collins, New York, 2001) used extremely detailed empirical research of major corporations over 50 to 100 years (the focus of Built to Last by the same author) to identify the key attributes of companies that are successful in the long-term.  The five key elements in building and sustaining a successful business include: Level 5 leadership, i.e., leaders that are focused on the good of the organization rather than personal reward or aggrandizement and that see their success as directly tied to the success of the company (this concept connects with  ideas presented in The Five Temptations of a CEO); first who, then what, i.e., focus on getting the right people on the bus and sitting in the right seats, then focus on making the business more effective, profitable, etc.;
confront the brutal facts, i.e., be willing to confront the hard facts of your current reality while never losing faith that you can prevail; identifying your “hedgehog concept,” i.e., understanding where the intersection lies between what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine; and developing and maintaining a culture of discipline at all levels of the organization to stay focused on the “hedgehog concept,” dropping or refusing to pursue activities that are not closely aligned with it.

4. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, imprint of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, 2000) is a useful book about leadership within organizations and completed “The Five Temptations of a CEO.”  The four obsessions include: building and maintaining a coherent leadership team that knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses, engages in constructive ideological conflict (connects with ideas presented in The Five Temptations of a CEO), and holds one another accountable for results; creating organizational clarity about what the business does and does not do, its values, and its uniqueness (this idea connects with and plays into the decisions made pursuant to the concepts presented  in The Discipline of Market Leaders); over-communicating organizational clarity to employees and customers through repetition and simplicity of message; reinforce organizational clarity through human systems by rewarding behavior and performance that is consistent with organizational aims and values in hiring, rewards, and performance management.

5. Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest by Peter Block (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1993) is a book that offers ideas important to developing a culture that fosters employee engagement and initiative.  It emphasized moving away from paternalistic management models and treating employees as responsible adults capable of doing the right things without micromanagement.  A key concept was that of the fair exchange, i.e., the company compensates and rewards employees in return for their whole-hearted commitment to the goals and objectives of the business and its customers.  This key principle was helpful in bringing balance to the “what has the company done for me lately” attitude by balancing the conversation to include “what have you done for the company lately.”

6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989) is an extremely useful background book on the philosophy of self-management (connecting with the idea of Level 5 leadership offered by Collins).  Key concepts presented in this book are to cultivate an abundance mentality (i.e., it is never an allornothing proposition in any situation; there is “enough to go around”) and the “degree of freedom” that exists in the stimulus-response model (i.e., the ability to choose your response in a given situation).  Another important concept was that of sharpening the saw (i.e., taking down time to relax and pursue activities that are fun in order to regenerate mental focus) and short-term imbalance to achieve long-term balance (i.e., the ability to emphasize certain activities above others for the short-term in order to establish conditions conducive to a more balanced life in the long term).

7. Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, imprint of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, 2004) is extremely useful in bringing great focus to internal meetings through clarity about the meeting purpose.  The focus is to be very clear about the level of management attention at the meeting, i.e., daily vs. tactical vs. strategic, and to avoid mixing these purposes in meetings.  Meetings will be far more useful and shorter as they became more focused.

8. Finance for Non-Financial Managers by Lawrence Tuller (Adams Media Corporation, Holbrook, Massachusetts, 1997) is very useful in explaining the elements of balance sheets, income statements, cash management, and their value and utility in managing the business.  It is not a book on accounting or bookkeeping, but instead focuses on distilling key indicator information out of the financial statements that are prepared by the company’s accountants and bookkeepers.  

9. The Elements of Style (3rd edition) by William Strunk and E.B. White (Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1979) is a very simple, highly readable book on writing style.  It is an important resource in improving the quality of written communications within a business.  The results will be greater clarity, accuracy, focus, and brevity of written communications.  

10. The Three Signs Of A Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, imprint of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, 2007) provides useful perspective on the sources of employees’ disaffection with their jobs and illustrates the tremendous gains in commitment, quality of production, and morale that can be achieved by attending to recognition, relevance, and measurement of employee contributions to the business.  The ideas in this book are aligned with those put forward by Block in Stewardship.

11. Harvard Business Review (journal) published by Harvard University Press is a useful publication in stimulating new ways of thinking about your business.  Much of what is written is focused on the management of very large corporations, but the articles nevertheless articulate insights and concepts that can be adapted to much smaller businesses.