- Lead Like Jesus by Ken Blanchard
The first of my top three business books focuses on leadership. Leadership is something that you never quite arrive at. There are good leaders, great leaders, and really awesome leaders, but it’s truly a lifelong journey. Any time someone owns a business, they need to work at being the best leader that they can be. If they can’t lead an organization or a team effectively, it will be very frustrating for their clients.
In my opinion, there are many different leaders that we can look up to. Most everyone, though, can agree that Jesus was an important leader. In my opinion, he was a perfect leader. If you’re going to model yourself after someone, I think Jesus would be a good choice. This book talks about servant leadership and the importance of putting your employees in front of you instead of behind you. It talks about serving your employees, serving your customers, and leading through servant leadership (which, unfortunately, is very rare in today’s society). This has definitely been an eye-opening book for me and my career.
- The Fish! Philosophy by Stephen C. Lundin
This book documents the story of a fish market in Seattle, Washington. This is the market where they throw fish around and interact with all of the customers. It’s just a fun atmosphere. If the experience of going to a business is complete misery, then it’s not going to be very successful. The book talks about how most people don’t like going to fish markets because they are usually nasty and smelly. It’s possible to even make a fish market a fun experience that customers look forward to. I think the importance also lies in the fact that people have a passion and love for what they do, so that fun can come to the surface.
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
Most of the time, we can be average without much effort. (Average is just that: average.) This book talks about the fact that it takes great people for a business to go from good to great. It’s not really about the principles, processes, details, or procedures—it’s really about great people. If you have great people on your team, you can have a great organization. Great people have tangible skill sets and intangible principles and attitudes. When you put those two components together, you’ll have a great person who is going to be a part of a great team.
I think that these are some books that every business owner should read. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us online or give us a call at 540-483-9382.
