As I mentioned in my previous post, I absolutely love reading books!  Consequently, I’ve read a lot of books in the last 10 years.  There are many books that I consider to have greatly been a part of literally transforming my life.  There were many great books that didn’t make my list that are classics and didn’t meet the criteria that I considered.

Additionally, since I have so many recommendations, I’ve decided to break them down into the following categories: Church Growth, Theology, Christian Living, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Business, Sociology, and African-American Studies.  I will devote blog space to cover each category in subsequent posts.

Here we go:

Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People by Ken Wananabe

BEST BOOK I EVER READ ON PROBLEM SOLVING!!!

When will authors & book publishers discover effective leaders are busy leading and like to read short books?  Ken Watanabe originally wrote Problem Solving 101 for Japanese schoolchildren.  His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.

He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months.

Watanabe’s Secret:

He uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.

Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for elementary students to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.  GET IT ON YOUR KINDLE NOW!

Honorable Mention: 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: IT’S SIMPLY THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ ON PROBLEM SOLVING HANDS DOWN!

Black Economics: Solutions for Economic and Community Empowerment by Jawanza Kunjufu

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN’S RECESSION SURVIVAL GUIDE

Black Economics: Solutions For Economic And Community Empowerment answers the critical questions of why foreign businesses have been so successful in the African American community.  But Black Economics does much more than merely identify and describe the dimensions of this chronic financial drain on the black community, it recommends clear, concise, practical and urgently needed empowerment solutions to assist the black community to secure economic gains.  Jawanza Kunjufu is candid, knowledgeable and persuasive.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: The author discusses the history of African-American businesses, the obstacles, and solutions for personal and community empowerment.

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT THIS BOOK: Black Economics should be required reading in every economics class, every urban church, community activists, and on the lending shelves of ever black community’s public library.

Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire by Reginald Lewis

This biography of business magnate Lewis is based on his unfinished autobiography; he died in 1993 at age 50 from brain cancer. This book, part history, part eulogy is the story of an African-American from the wrong side of the tracks in Baltimore who made it through Harvard Law and then into corporate financing eventually purchasing and leading Beatrice International one of the larger food companies in the world.

His journey from middle-class Baltimore resident to international citizen makes for fascinating reading. He was in the process of writing his autobiography when he died, and Blair Walker consulted many sources in order to give a full and accurate account of this intense, goal-oriented man’s life.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:  Not only was Reginald Lewis an extremely successful businessman, but he was also a caring philanthropist.

How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America by Earl Graves

The author is the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine and owner of several companies. He provides a good overview of the procedures for starting a new business plan, getting a bank loan, and marketing.  An introduction is helpful, but a person would need to know a lot more than what’s here to really start a business.  Eighty percent of new small businesses fail within five years.  Much of Graves’s time is spent talking about his personal business history, racism, and political issues.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:  Value hard & expect no handouts.  While this book would help anyone regardless of race, it should be required reading for all young (college and high school age) African Americans.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins

This monograph is a response to questions raised by readers in the social sector.  It is not a new book. I have direct experience in the social sector with over twenty-five years as an advisor or board member of several, varied non-profits. “Good to Great and the Social Sectors” resonated with me as it fills a very deep void in social sector leadership guidance.

Many seminary professors & academicians are not too fond of churches adopting business models and principles.  I openly embrace business principles because we can learn from them and make our organizations stronger.   In fact, due to the diffuse power structure that exists for most social sector organizations, non-profits need even greater discipline – disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, and disciplined allocation of resources.

The book is organized around five issues that need to be addressed for greatness.

These are:

Issue One – How do you define great without business metrics?
Issue Two – What is “Level 5 Leadership” in the social sector?
Issue Three – How can you get the right people on the bus?
Issue Four – How do you apply the Hedgehog Concept (attaining piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results) without a profit motive?
Issue Five – How do you use brand to build momentum?

Great societies have both great business sectors and great social sectors. With this in mind, Collins was motivated to write this book. He realized that it was not simply good enough for him to focus on a great business sector but also on a great social sector. He has done us a service.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: Greatness can be achieved in non-profit organizations too.

Managing the Nonprofit Organization by Peter Drucker

“Don’t be afraid of strengths in your organization,” writes Peter Drucker. “This is the besetting sin of people who run organizations. Of course, able people are ambitious. But you run far less risk of having able people around who want to push you out than you risk by being served by mediocrity.”

In my opinion, wisdom still oozes from Drucker’s 1990 book on nonprofit management.  Many leaders re-read at least one Drucker book a year.  If you lead a nonprofit, this is a good place to start.

It includes five major sections:

1)    The Mission Comes First: and your role as a leader;

2)    From Mission to Performance: effective strategies for marketing, innovation and fund development;

3)    Managing for Performance: how to define it; how to measure it;

4)    People and Relationships: your staff, your board, your volunteers, your community; and

5)    Developing Yourself: as a person, as an executive, as a leader.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: Managers/leaders in the non-profit sector should consider this a must read.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: It taught me to affirm my team at during staff meetings with Drucker’s reminder that “strong people always have strong weaknesses too.  Where there are peaks, there are valleys.  And no one is strong in many areas.” It takes a village!

Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout

According to author Jack Trout, either you’ve got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don’t have much at all.  In today’s global marketplace and at its lightning-fast rate of change, there’s no point in inventing and presenting a product only to sit back and hope that consumers everywhere will discover its greatness.  It’s not simply about what you or your product can do; it’s about what you do differently from everyone else.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: This relatively short book focuses on the idea that companies who don’t capitalize on the unique features of their product or service, and who don’t evolve into a unique identity will end up in the fossil layers of business failure.

Jack Trout on Strategy by Jack Trout

“A great business strategy without proper marketing will often fail in a highly competitive world.”  This is in the first few pages of Trout’s book and lays the groundwork for the rest of the chapters.  If you’ve never read anything from Jack Trout before, this is the book to start with!  Trout on Strategy is the Bible of marketing strategy.  According to Trout, strategy is all about winning and Jack Trout is all about strategy.  He presents the latest thinking on the topic:

1)    Strategy is All About Survival

2)    Strategy is All About Perceptions

3)    Strategy is All About Being Different

4)    Strategy is All About Competition

5)    Strategy is All About Specialization

6)    Strategy is All About Simplicity

7)    Strategy is All About Leadership

8)    Strategy is All About Reality

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: “A great business strategy without proper marketing will often fail in a highly competitive world.”

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze.

Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice—non-analytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are “little people,” mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It’s not just sustenance to them; it’s their self-image.

Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they’ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods–our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in–although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

Authors Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten operate 800-CEO-READ, a specialty business-book retailer.  Out of the countless business books they have read every year for a quarter century, they have culled 100 of the best and presented them in review format.

You get the classics, like How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, and The HP Way, by David Packard, but you also get the whimsical (Oh, the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss); historical (Never Give In, speeches by Winston Churchill); artistic (The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp); and philosophical (The Monk and the Riddle, by Komisar and Lineback).

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: At the end of each review, the authors direct readers to other books both inside and outside The 100 Best.  Additionally, sprinkled throughout are sidebars taking the reader beyond business books, suggesting movies, novels, and even children’s books that offer equally relevant insights.