The 100 Best Business Books of All Time | Jack Covert, Todd Sattersten

Sometimes you prefer to gain the knowledge/know-how in a zipped format. This is a book that you look for: "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time". What I liked most in this book is it provides summaries for a hundred business books and also provides comments on the main messages of these books. Here are my highlights from this book:

Productivity comes from a quiet state of mental being.

Despite most people’s declaration that there is just not enough time in the day, time is not the issue; clarifying the actions needed is where people fall down.

Three common time sponges that need to be considered include: doing things that don’t need to be done, doing things that could be better done by others, and doing things that require others to do unnecessary things.

Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time

Effectiveness is, after all, not a ‘subject,’ but a self-discipline.

“I used to think life presented a five-page menu of choices. Now I think the choice is in whether to be honest, to ourselves and others, and the rest is more of an uncovering, a peeling away of layers, discovering talents we assumed we didn’t have.”

“The President Gets 100 Days to Prove Himself—You Get 90.”

Watkins tells readers to “Promote Yourself.” This may sound like a call to create a press release announcing your arrival, but what Watkins really wants you to do is understand the requirements of your new role, and this means abandoning the tried-and-true. Don’t coast on your previous successes. Prepare for early missteps and be ready to learn from those mistakes.

To be successful you must figure out what you are good at and do it.

A title is also a tool. If our salesman is a vice president and yours is a sales rep, and both are in a waiting room, guess who gets in first and gets the most attention.

In “Leadership Is an Art”, Max De Pree, former CEO of Herman Miller, describes this art of leadership as “liberating people to do what is required of them, in the most effective and humane way possible.”

“When we think about leaders and the variety of gifts people bring to corporations and institutions, we see that the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.” Doing this eliminates the separation between the life we lead at home and that which we lead at the office.

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”

Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.

Consider the choices you make today, for they are the seeds of tomorrow’s success.

The more opportunities I seize, the more opportunities multiply before me.

When setting a goal—whether quitting smoking or starting a business—the act of writing and sharing your dream activates that dual mechanism of commitment and constituency.

If you can’t be the first in a category, then set up a new category you can be first in.

It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than it is to aim at imperfection and hit it.

[Y]our business is a means rather than an end, a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains the life you have.

Shortly after Rosenzweig rediscovered his passion for the project, he asked Ziegler when the right time to start a business is. Ziegler answered, in his usual thoughtful manner, “Never and always.”

Hawken also believes that business is about practice, not just about theory—no different from riding a surfboard or playing a piano. To stay grounded in practice, he suggests, “Be the customer. Go outside and look back through the window of your small business. Be a child trying to figure out how the world works. Go to a crowded park on a sunny day. Don’t go into the back room to read another book about business.” No newcomer is expected to be good from the get-go, so Hawken advises, “Relax. Take your time. Work and practice and learn.”

It’s the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.

Don’t measure things to support your ego; measure only what helps you learn.

A good businessman is hard to bruise and quick to heal.

And yet Moneyball is more than a tale about a shrewd businessman. Michael Lewis tells a story that will inspire any reader to think creatively and individually, and not be limited by limited resources. The monster takeaway from this book is the need for new metrics. Find a new way to conduct your business that is lean and creative. This atypical business book belongs on every businessperson’s bookshelf.

If necessity is the mother of invention, play is the father. Use it to fertilize your thinking.

“The song goes: No one is in charge. We can’t predict the future. Now hear the flip side of the album: We’re all steering. And we can learn to anticipate what is immediately ahead. To learn is to live.”

Everything fails; it is just a matter of when.

Recommendations reduce the noise.

Always remember that if you took the time and care to choose the right book to solve your problem, the reading should be enjoyable too.