Never stopping learning is one of my core values; learning more about my area of expertise and learning about the interactivity with other aspects of making a business run optimally. My favourite way to learn is reading business books. And I like to share when I find one worth recommending.
For me great business books have to tick 4 boxes: learn, think, action, impact.
Every Wednesday over on LinkedIn, I recommend my favourite business books; follow the hashtag #BusinessBookBites on LinkedIn to see my latest reviews.
2nd February 2022
This book is about challenging assumptions. It’s about what can happen when you question ‘why’, question what is seen as ‘given’ and take the choice to be curious about what could be.
This book builds upon the idea shared in Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnston. It doesn’t dismiss its central message that change is inevitable and your must learn to embrace it but rather widens the focus. Told again as mice in a maze this book follows the journey of some brave mice who are willing to question the constraints they find themselves in.
This book won’t be for everyone; lessons taught as fables need to relate to the reader through the characters. I would recommend this book for people who want to push forward, do something different and break through barriers.
26th January 2022
This book is about how to make change happen. It breaks down the common road blocks we face when it comes to making changes and shares techniques around how to overcome them.
Diving into research which proves not only why techniques can combat certain change challenges but also when they won’t work.
A practical book that will leave you with a recipe designed specifically for you, rather than a one size fits all formula.
Highly recommended for any type of change you are trying to make, big or small, work related or home related.
19th January 2022
This book is about concise communication, getting the relevant point across succinctly. It’s about why you need to be brief and more importantly how to be.
Being brief isn’t about not using as many words; it’s is about getting to the point with clarity and relevance to your message recipient.
The book outlines several common challenges people face and will help you understand what specifically you need to work on to become brief in your messaging.
A very practical book that draws on the authors expertise and experience, providing several useful frameworks to enable you to get to the point, and make the point you want to make.
I have used this book almost every day since I finished reading it. Very very highly recommended for anyone that wants to get their message across while respecting people’s time.
12th January 2022
This book is about emotions. How they are constructed, what they cause, how to use them to your advantage and how to build better relationships by understanding them.
This book shares the core principles of emotions. With understanding and awareness comes a strengthened ability to manage and improve. This book delivers.
I picked this book as it’s a topic I haven’t read much about and I didn’t have any expectations. But wow, it really set me up for greater success managing myself; my mindset; and indeed in interacting with, building relationships with and helping others.
Very pragmatic and factual in its delivery with an emphasis on explaining, no fluff or cutesiness here, which is always my concern when reading books on these types of topics.
Really highly recommended
5th January 2022
This book is about productivity but offers a lot more than the usual advice of focus on the big things first, prioritise, clear diary space, learn how to say no…This book is about figuring out how to make the hard things easy, how to reframe how, why and what you do to create an effortless state to achieve what you want.
Jam packed with actionable tips and real life stories to ensure you remember the key points this book is useful, helpful and perspective changing.
I feel I have read the same book over and over again, reading about productivity, but this book offered different ideas and techniques or advice that will evolve your efficiency.
Very highly recommended!
15th December 2021
This book is about why you should start, why initiative is the missing piece and why you might be waiting for something that will never come: permission.
This book is more of a manifesto than a book and won’t be for everyone. But if you want to achieve something and aren’t making headway, this book might just get you going the way you want to.
I really enjoyed this book, a fascinating book with an overflow of opportunities for spin off thoughts. It’s definitely got me going.
8th December 2021
This book is about why the winning strategy is playing the long game. It convinces you why and then shows you how to play; and how to play well.
A great book for anyone looking to achieve a big goal. Not just a theoretical book but a very practical one, encouraging you to rethink your roadblocks and to rethink how to take action.
I particularly enjoyed this book and felt it spoke to me on so many levels. In some ways letting me know what I’m doing and feeling is good and in some ways introducing me to new ideas.
Really highly recommended to anyone who wants to get somewhere and wants help forging the path ahead.
1st December 2021
This book is about problem solving. A wonderfully simple book it outlines the main steps for problem solving and takes you through some of the well known techniques.
Different to the books that I usually recommend in that there wasn’t anything entirely new that I didn’t already know. But it reminds you that every challenge, every obstacle is just a problem. You know how to solve problems and if you feel a little rusty this book reminds you of the techniques.
A simple book for smart people.
Highly recommended.
24th November 2021
This book is about marketing. It takes you on a journey of how the world has changed, how human perceptions and expectations have evolved and how that is reflected in what marketing works.
It’s central message is ‘the most human business wins’ and it outlines how, even with all the change we face, basic human truths are constant – we all want to belong, to be loved, to be respected, to feel purposeful. The book explains why you need to understand this and the implications it has for you and your marketing efforts.
If you are even remotely linked to marketing this book is a must read.
Highly recommended.
17th November 2021
This book is about the benefits of staying small; how you can form a better life by focusing on being better not bigger. It presents a convincing argument as to why and offers practical strategies as to how.
A company of one can be a solo business owner or operated from within a larger business. It’s about making decisions about your work based on what matters to you avoiding the headaches that comes with big business.
This book isn’t just for those who want to work alone, probing at most aspects of business it offers refreshing perspectives on how to operate in the world of work and align what you do all day with what you value most.
Highly recommended to anyone working in business and most especially those who seek a fulfilling life that harmonises with how they bring in income to live it.
Really inspiring and enjoyable read.
10th November 2021
This #BusinessBookBites video is the 25th in the series – to celebrate the occasion rather than my usual single recommendation, I am highlighting the 4 books that I think best delivered on each of my 4 criteria – Learn, Think, Action, Impact.
📚My intention with this series is to help you answer the question “Should I read this book?”
✔LEARN – Does it teach me something new, is it easy to digest? Winner: Everybody Writes – Ann Handley – 9th June – Write with economy and style, peak the interest of your potential customers – Content Marketing, Copywriting LinkedIn Video Link
✔THINK – Does it spark new ideas and lead me to new thought connections? Winner: Think Again – Adam Grant – 18th August – Recognise how you and others unknowingly think and relearn a better way – Psychology, Mindset, Change Leadership LinkedIn Video Link
✔ACTION – Does it inspire me to take action; does it show me how? Winner: Switch – Chip and Dan Heath – 7th July – Successfully implement change by messaging to people’s hearts and minds – Change Leadership, Management LinkedIn Video Link
✔IMPACT – Do those actions cause an improvement for me or my business? Winner: Content DNA – John Espirian – 19th May – Position your business so it’s remembered and preferred – Branding, Content, Marketing LinkedIn Video Link
27th October 2021
This book is about how to get more done.
It’s about time management but takes a different approach to other books I have seen. Focusing more on you and how you are spending your time and providing flexible ideas about how you can get more out of your day.
The book also helps you overcome mindset challenges. For example guilt and expectation setting.
Filled with questions to challenge you to look at what you are doing. I read this book a good few years ago and am still using tips I learned from it and have picked up new ones rereading it for this review.
Highly recommended
20th October 2021
This book is about how to lead change.
On the surface it’s a story of a colony of penguins who discover their iceberg is melting and what happens as they try to overcome the challenge. It demonstrates and teaches you the opportunities and hurdles that come with change though the characters in the story and events as they unfold.
Based on Kotter’s 8 steps to successful change the book takes you through how to set the stage, how to decide what to do, assemble the right team, make it happen and make it stick.
This book is a starter guide, if you are new to making change happen or have been doing it for years but have never thought through the steps in detail, this book is for you.
Everything is about change and whether you are just starting out or are the CEO we all need to participate, this book will teach you how to do it well.
Highly recommended
13th October 2021
This book is a how to, everything you need to know, guide to LinkedIn. It covers all the basics and the advanced basics from your profile, to content, to your company pages, to connecting.
Written in a practical way it takes you through excersises for you implement the ideas and is a great reference guide.
I truely wish I’d known about this book when I started on LinkedIn, and have been recommending it to everyone who asks me about LinkedIn.
Whether your a complete novice, a dabbler or on a mission to up your game this book will help.
Highly recommended
6th October 2021
This book is about ideas. How to generate ideas, how to ensure others hear them, how to get the best out collective thinking and how to make ideas happen.
Adam Grant is one of my favourite business book authors writing in a style that is easy to read, filled with stories but always backed by extensive research. This book helped me not only get more out of myself and my ideas; but also how to understand those around me and ensure everyone’s contribution is maximised.
In today’s world good ideas and executing them well is what separates the good from the great. This book will will help you understand how to be great.
A very very highly recommended read!
29th September 2021
This book outlines a set of principles for business and life success. The 5 laws are shared through a story of a young ambitious ‘go-getter’ as he learns from a wise and successful business man.
It’s central theme is those who give value will recieve value in return, but it’s so much more than that; teaching you what value means, what the implications of the sphere you serve are and how being you is to put your best foot forward.
A feel-good story with an important and evergreen message. Both an enjoyable read and an impactful message.
22nd September 2021
This book is about how the mindset for success. It’s about the difference between ‘failing’ and ‘being a failure’ and how adjusting your perception will improve your chances of success. Told through the eyes of a young, not doing very well, salesman as it takes a journey which leads him to understand how making adjustments to how he thinks will skyrocket his chances of success.
This book teaches valuable lessons of how to improve your success rate in a fun easy to digest way.
15th September 2021
This book is about how to influence and convince others. Outlining 50 persuasion techniques which are backed by rigorous scientific experimentation the book demonstrates how the techniques work and how you can apply them.
Building on the ‘weapons of influence’ (social proof, scarcity, authority, liking, reciprocity and consistency) outlined in Robert Cialdini’s book ‘Influence’, this book takes these ideas, proves they work and shows you how to use them. Emphasising the ethical use of these powerful tools.
Although this book is scientific in it’s approach, it’s light and easy to read and filled with insights that trigger aha moments.
Whether you work in sales, marketing, leadership (or are a parent) this book is very insightful and practical. Highly recommended to anyone that needs to persuade others to move in the right direction.
8th September 2021
This book is about our natural instincts which tend to skew our perception of facts. The book outlines 10 such instincts and uses truths about the world we live in to demonstrate how things are better than you think and how you can stop yourself from falling victim to to these biases.
With a focus on how human psychology affects our view of world economics, it’s arguably not a typical business book but I found the insight and information about how people think and percieve information, improved my ability to understand, and therefore work better with, people at work.
1st September 2021
This book is about introverts. It outlines exactly what ‘introvert’ means and takes you on a journey of how introverts have been viewed over the years.
Whether you’re an introvert or not it explains how it feels to be one and helped you understand how to create environments where both introverts and extroverts can thrive. After all a third to half of us are introverts.
This book, which I read many years ago, had a huge impact on my understanding of myself and of others. Very highly recommended read
25th August 2021
This book is about how we can all get in our own way, how many of the obstacles in our path can be cleared away by identifying what’s causing them and thinking about addressing them differently.
This book tells the story of 8 clients as they visit Investigator Lewis to seek advice on how to crack their own cases, Investigator Lewis then confers with Professor P and reports back to the client with her findings. Told in a humorous and light hearted way the book shares a lot of insight and information without feeling heavy or overwhelming.
The book encourages you to think about and address aspects of your own thinking that might be holding you back.
If you are looking to become a better version of yourself and don’t want to spend hours researching the psychology and philosophies this book is for you. A very enjoyable read.
18th August 2021
This book is about the human struggles with unlearning and rethinking. It’s about why we get stuck on our believes and how we reinforce them to ourselves, subconsciously. This book helps you understand why and how this happens and more importantly what you can do about it.
The book is split into three core parts:
▶ Individual Rethinking – Updating our own views
▶ Interpersonal Rethinking – Opening other people’s minds
▶ Collective Rethinking – Creating communities of lifelong learners
This book opened my mind to thinking in different ways and recognising how others think. Think again is simply outstanding. It’s in my top ten for learning, thinking and impact. Very very highly recommended.
11th August 2021
Told as a story of a manager facing a toxic work environment, this book is about how to improve morale and how it feels to be at work.
A short book which outlines the key lessons that Mary, the manager, learned from her local fish market and how you can apply them to your own work environment.
If you ‘hate Mondays’ or feel you or your team could use some guidance on how to boost morale a recommended read for you!
4th August 2021
Blue Ocean Strategy, originally published in 2004, has become a business book classic and international best seller . This book is about strategy. About how to create leaps in value for buyers, employees and companies.
Creating blue oceans is about looking at strategy in a different light; challenging the traditional models of ‘how to beat the competition’ and instead shows you how to find an unseen empty space of your own to create demand in. It outlines the importance of winning the hearts and minds of your people and how strategy can be formulated and executed simultaneously.
Whether your heading up a multinational giant or are working solo there is so much valuable insight in this book. It really challenged my thinking about many things beyond strategy itself.
‘Must read’ in my opinion, very highly recommended
28th July 2021
This book is about understanding how to be happy. It falls more in the category of self-help or self-development than business book. I include it firstly as the points throughout the book are backed up scientific evidence and because of the impact that being positive and feeling happy have on our ability to be effective at work.
The book helps you understand how the human brain works and the science behind how to be happy, ultimately so you can retrain yours. The concept that runs through the book is that of ‘ordinary joys’, those things in life that are small and can seem insignificant but bring us happiness even just momentarily.
The popping noise a jar makes when you first open it or not breaking pace, arriving at a crossing as it turns green or when a random baby smiles at you in the supermarket.
I really enjoyed this book and found it different to others in this category, focusing heavily on understanding why backed by evidence. Highly recommended.
21st July 2021
This book is a journey through Niraj’s life picking out lessons learned along the way. The book highlights 27 lessons including life lessons, career lessons and of course sales lessons.
A hybrid autobiography/ business book that invites you to reflect on what you have learned through your journey so far. It demonstrates that many of the attributes required for being a good human are those you need to be a good sales person – you probably already have more sales skills than you realise… After all Everybody DOES Work in Sales…
This book also focuses on caring and reminds you that everyone has a story that you can’t see. To truely care about your fellow humans you need to recognise they have their own story they are living through too.
14th July 2021
This book is about how to build momentum for ideas, careers or businesses. How some ideas pull ahead, why, and how to tip the odds in your favour.
A really inspiring book that allows you to understand how timing, people and opportunity capture matter and how to shape the path to reaching your goals more effectively.
If you have read Known(book review below), another of Mark’s fantastic books, this book (in his own words is) “Known volume 2”. Known talks about how to build your brand this book helps you put momentum behind it.
7th July 2021
This book is about making change happen; how to empower others to see where you want them to go and how to enable them to want to go there.
This book helps you understand that all progress is about your ability to lead people in the right direction. A brilliant idea is no good if you can’t connect it to people and allow them to believe. Knowledge alone doesn’t incite change.
Packed full of memorable examples to help you implement the three key principals of making change happen
Whether you are trying to get your kids to put their plates in the dishwasher, to convince the local community to upgrade the hall or to shift the direction of a large team at work; this book will help.
For someone who has read a LOT of business books it’s a bold statement to say this is my favourite; it’s my favourite because it opened my eyes the widest and changed my understanding the most from where I was before I read it and the journey it started me on in the time since. Highly recommended!
30th June 2021
This book is about ‘how to get heard above the noise of today’s social media’.
With a lot of books on the market on the subject of content marketing/ social selling what makes this one different?
Aside from the writing style which draws you in, it offers advice beyond the boiler-plate advice you see in some other books. He talks through each aspect that you need to get right and explains how to do it. Using helpful and memorable acronyms along the way to keep you right.
Slow and steady wins the race – is a thread weaved throughout the book. Specifically targeting those who are offering a service (consultants, coaches, advisers) he outlines why this world means a different approach.
It’s an enjoyable read, an insightful read and a useful read. Highly recommended.
23rd June 2021
A real game-changer when it comes to articulating what you offer in messaging that speaks directly to your ideal customer in a way that they will listen.
Storytelling is a subject I have always felt I don’t quite understand, this book dissects the elements of stories which people respond to. Taking you step by step through each part, enabling you to craft it for your unique offering.
It goes way beyond the ‘talk about benefits not features’ advice and shows you how to speak both the hearts and minds of your potential customers. How to position yourself as the person (or product) that your customer will want to have by their side as they do battle with whatever problem you solve.
If you change your offering or target niche or add new business offerings, using the framework in this book will quickly let you articulate its value to the person you have in mind.
Cannot recommend this book highly enough!
16th June 2021
Who isn’t facing constant change? Facing what feels like an increasing rate of change? Trying to help others dealing with change?
This book is about how to better equip yourself (and others) to anticipate and handle inevitable change.
Told as a story of 4 characters, it follows their journeys as they react to changes that are out of their control. The book encourages you to reflect on which character you tend to behave like, which one you would like to be and what you can do about it.
A seemingly simple story that can help anyone from teenagers to new mangers to senior leaders. Each time I have reread it, I’ve reflected and learned new things about myself and my understanding of others.
At about an hour read time, great book to pick up and digest quickly but take a lifetime to continue learning from. No wonder over 28 million copies have been sold worldwide!
9th June 2021
This book is amazing a ‘bible’ of tips and explanations for writing more effectively and efficiently.
The book is for ‘everybody’; seasons writers and those, like me, who feel writing is really hard and you don’t know where to start. It gives you really practical tips on the words to choose, in which order and also the broader problem of getting started, having a plan and keeping going.
I hadn’t recognised that the focus in school was on creative writing and much of the writing we do for our work or businesses is a completly different ball game. This book helped me understand the rules of this other game.
I bought this book as a writing ‘no hoper’ and finished it thinking ‘yes, I can do this’.
Thank you Ann Handley for changing my perspective and giving me the tools to get going!
2nd June 2021
This book is a ‘how to’ guide for effective personal branding. Explaining why and how to standout online, filled with actionable excersises, no wonder it continues to be a bestseller!
I wasn’t sure it was for me, as I have no desire to be famous, but it’s 100% relevant to anyone trying to stand out online. Taking you through why its important, what to do and how to do it.
Thank you Mark Schaefer for sharing your wisdom with the world! Highly recommend following Mark, his content is always fresh thinking, interesting perspective and value packed!
26th May 2021
This is a wonderful book that teaches you far more than sales skills, recommended for anyone who wants to get better at positioning what they have to offer or become a better version of themselves.
If you are new to sales, want to up your game or want to take a more modern approach this book is for you.
Thank you Jules White for writing such a wonderful book that had a real impact on me and my business.
26th May 2021
I’m not sure there are many people in my close network that I haven’t recommended Content DNA to, this video outlines why.
If you are building a personal brand, trying to up your LinkedIn game or figuring out your content strategy this book is a must read!
I also recommend following John Espirian on LinkedIn if you are looking for LinkedIn and/or content tips.
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