Inspiration can sometimes come from the unlikeliest of places. Whether it’s the leadership lessons of former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh, the story of how Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew transformed the economy of the country or the underdog tale of Nike founder Phil Knight, each of the books below provided these 10 CEOs with insights and advice on how to overcome business challenges.
Find out their top picks below.
One that was helpful to me early on was Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands by Doug Holt. Each chapter is a case study of a particular brand that had outsized success in a category where there wasn’t a lot of differentiation between the players.
It focuses on how these successful brands leverage what is happening in culture to rise above the others. That’s something most non-marketing business people don’t always appreciate.
One book that I think is very good is Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
A lot of business books rely on hindsight and frame a glorious challenge that the leader overcame. This book presents a more realistic view of how much of a grind being a leader can be and the true challenge of making tough decisions. He does a really nice job of more accurately framing what it’s like.
I love reading books written by sports coaches because there’s a lot of crossover between building a successful sports team and a successful corporate one. One book I’ve read over and over again is The Score Takes Care of Itself, by [former San Francisco 49ers coach] Bill Walsh.
It’s funny because I’m into sports, but I’m not that interested, and people often wonder why I read these very intense sports books. But they really get to the heart of the question of how to build a high-performance team.
I think every founder or leader at a startup or scale-up should read Shoe Dog, which is the autobiography of Nike founder Phil Knight. It’s an important reminder that any brand, even these giant global corporations, did not start out that way.
It’s a great book that shows all of the twists and turns that Nike took on its road to becoming such an iconic brand. People forget that Nike was really pushed to the brink in the 1990s. I find it reassuring to know that even a company like Nike had to weather a storm. It’s a great read about resilience.
It’s got to be From Third World to First: Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom written by Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. He was in post for over 30 years and, whatever your opinion of Lee is, it’s an incredible account of how he almost single-handedly took a third-world country and built it into a first-world country in one generation.
Certainly, there are a few lessons in there that business leaders could learn from him and his nation’s journey. He’s the ultimate founder.
It depends on the stage you are at in your career and the challenges your business is facing.
I’m quite an extrovert but I know people who have benefited a lot from a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. People think business leaders should be very confident and outgoing, but introverts can be amazing leaders too because they listen.
Over the years I’ve particularly enjoyed The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor; The Score will Take Care of Itself, by Bill Walsh; Quiet Leadership, by David Rock; Rocket Fuel, by Gino Wickman and Mark Winters; and Lessons from a Warzone, by Al Roumani.
That said, I think business leaders can learn the most from literature. Nothing is more helpful for business leaders – especially in the early years – than understanding people, and no one captures people better than authors, poets and playwrights.
One that’s worth mentioning is Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I was introduced to it many years ago. It portrays the various elements of really making sure your team is aligned and operating as one, as well as the common dysfunctions teams encounter as you work together. So it’s not personal to anybody in the team, it’s just humans coming together.
One of the primary responsibilities of a leader is to make sure the team you’re responsible for is operating in a highly aligned fashion. This book does a good job at helping with that.
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek challenges traditional views on competition in business. It introduces the idea of two games – finite and infinite – suggesting that businesses should adopt the infinite approach. He suggests that business is not about winning and instead it should be about playing continuously with a clear purpose and bringing value to your customers and the world around us. It is about making a lasting impact, not just reaching an endpoint.
I’m not a huge fan of management books. But one that helped me a lot in developing my leadership style, was Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. One of the concepts in the book is the ‘level-five leader’, which explores the idea that the most successful companies are not necessarily the ones with leaders who have complete control or pretend to know all the answers.
The level-five leadership style involves a lot of listening and is much more collaborative, rather than always having to be the person leading from the front. This truly inspired me because I never thought leadership was one of my strengths but I managed to find my personal style reflected in this book.
Inspiration can sometimes come from the unlikeliest of places. Whether it's the leadership lessons of former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh, the story of how Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew transformed the economy of the country or the underdog tale of Nike founder Phil Knight, each of the books below provided these 10 CEOs with insights and advice on how to overcome business challenges.
Find out their top picks below.
One that was helpful to me early on was Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands by Doug Holt. Each chapter is a case study of a particular brand that had outsized success in a category where there wasn’t a lot of differentiation between the players.
