The 10 Best Books on Team Building
Note: The 10 Best Books on Team Building has been republished on my new website, ejorgenson.com. Come visit and subscribe to read all my new blog posts.
As the curator and compiler of The Evergreen Library, I’ve spent many hundreds (thousands?) of hours reading through business resources and passing on the very best to readers.
In the past year, I’ve written 400+ pages (nearly 100,000 words) about the best business resources for founders, managers, hustlers, business owners, entrepreneurs and investors.
At Year End, it seemed helpful to compile a short list of the books that stood out. For the Manager or Business Nerd on your shopping list, here are the most important books on hiring, inspiring (and maybe firing).
You can also check out: The 11 Best Books on Business Strategy
And: The 12 Best Books about Business Growth
Books on Hiring and Onboarding New Employees
A good team starts with good hires, and there are lot of things to get right to make that happen. Attracting the right candidates, selecting the best of them, creating a great interview, choosing the right person, and executing a great onboarding process.
It’s All About Who
This book by is by a relatively unknown entrepreneur, and it is full of old-fashioned timeless wisdom, like you would get from your grandpa, if he’d built an empire of a $100 million business in a heavily commoditized industry. A quick read, lots of wisdom for a few hours of work.
The Checklist Manifesto
Written by a surgeon, this book is an exploration of the power of checklists. These simple, free tools have made planes safer, surgeries more successful, and businesses thrive. Hiring is the perfect place to implement a checklist, where there are a lot of moving pieces, and missing a small, important one can be disastrous. Life-changing one-day read.
Books on Communicating with your Team
“Business communication” sounds like the most boring thing on the earth. Maybe that is why so few people study it, and this oversight leads to some tremendous problems, which are often attributed to causes that are more ‘obvious’ issues, but which are red herrings for the real problem: communication.
High Output Management
Andy Grove of Intel is a legend in the tech management world, and his book, High Output Management, is Canon in Silicon Valley. Boiling down management to simple metaphors and accessible stories, Grove has created an incredible resource for managers of all experience levels.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
This book perfectly captures (I would guess) sitting across from Ben Horowitz, and getting his candid advice on your various management challenges. The story of his epic journey with Opsware, and what he learned about communication and management along the way is overflowing with helpful lessons and advice.
Letters From a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Not a conventional business book, but one of my favorite reads. This is actually a fiction book, written as a series of letters from a father who is a self-made businessman to his son over the years as he grows up. It isn’t the most modern book on this list, yet it is full of timeless truths and the style of writing gives it a memorable gravitas. [Free on Kindle!]
The Alliance
Written by Linkedin Founder and Silicon Valley veteran Reid Hoffman, The Alliance is an exploration of how the employee/employer relationship works, where it is often strained, and how it can be reconfigured to improve the experience for both parties.
The Goal
The Goal is primarily about process management, yet it has a lot of implicit messages about prioritization and communication while working with a team. This book always gets me thinking differently about which things to be focusing on, and how to get them done.
Books on Managing Performance
A manager and team builder’s success is defined by the output of her team. She will spend most of her time concerned with improving the performance of those who she is responsible for. This set of books is all about creating the environment for people to do their best work.
Work Rules!
Written by Google’s ‘Head of People’, this book is full of new and interesting things Google is doing to innovate management. Their experiments and practices are fascinating and often counterintuitive.
True Professionalism
This book comes from the professional services world, from those building and managing law firms, accounting practices, etc. Since the entire value of these businesses is based on the quality of the people and their work, it is a great industry to study for best practices.
Business Stripped Bare
Of course, there had to be a Richard Branson book in here, because he’s the most lovable guy in the world and he builds brands around service. Good service comes from happy employees, which is only possible with good management. This is his best, most complete book yet, so I highly recommend it.
Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
Click Here to Buy This Book
www.amazon.com
There you have it! That wraps up the 2015 Book roundup from Evergreen!
Thanks for reading! I’ve moved to ejorgenson.com — feel free to visit and catch up on my latest content.
Follow me on Twitter: @EricJorgensonCheck out Evergreen, a resource to build smarter business brains.Building and Managing a TeamHow to Find and Recruit the Team you Need
How Not to Hire like a Clownshow
Compensation Rules Everything Around Me
Why Employee Onboarding is holding you back
How to Boost Employee Retention
How Performance Reviews are being Reinvented
Secrets to Perfecting Organizational Communication
How to Manage Scale, and Operate in Scaling Organizations
How to Fire an EmployeeStrategy and Competitive AdvantageHow to Master the Craft of Strategy
Competitive Advantage: How to Build a Winning Business
The Power of Network Effects
How Cost Leadership Builds Powerful Businesses
Why the Best Brands Stand Out
Scale as Competitive AdvantageBuilding the BusinessHow to get good business Ideas: Mental Alchemy of Ideation
Product/Market Fit: What it really means & How to Measure it
How to Failure-proof your business with Customer Development
How Strategy and Psychology Work Together to Perfect Pricing
The Most Important Equations in Business - CAC (Part 1)
The Simple Math Behind Every Profitable Business - CLV (Part 2)
How Psychology behind Word-of-Mouth Works
The Secret Core of Every Successful Business--Distribution
The Most Important Lessons in SalesHow to be a Great EmployeeHow to Start a New Job: Handling Career Transitions like a Boss
How to Master the Discipline of Product ManagementI've also written about How & Why we started Evergreen:How a prototype's failure created the next iteration
Mission & Method of Evergreen
