You are thinking you need an MBA from a top school to boost your business acumen and prepare yourself for a challenging career ahead, chuck the thought because this list of business books will have you thinking like a top business major in no time.
So, if you want to bolster your networking, leadership, and time management skills, it’s time to get reading.
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
Covey explores everything from family life to productivity and positive thinking. Use his four quadrant exercise to help you achieve maximum effectiveness and stop spinning your wheels with unproductive activities.
2. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Its back cover says, “There have been millionaires, and indeed, billionaires, who have made their fortunes as a result of reading this success classic than any other book ever printed.”
3. The Effective Executive. Peter F. Drucker.
An oldie but a goodie, this classic still occupies the shelves of many leaders. In it, he explains how although some are natural-born leaders, there are skills that can be developed to make a better executive.
4. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. Jim Collins
You’ll love author’s deep store of refreshing ideas for evaluating business leadership, including “Level 5 Leadership.”
5. Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built. Richard Tedlow
The studious business person can learn much from this review of the struggles and successes of these world-renowned leaders.
6. True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. Bill George
Rather than adopting time-worn models of stuffy leadership, George inspires readers to know themselves and create their own, tailor-made style.
7. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. Arbinger Institute
Using relatable storytelling to drive the theme, the authors reveal how we refuse to see our true motives, limiting our potential success and happiness.
8. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman
Nobel Prize winner and psychologist Daniel Kahneman breaks down our thought patterns into two sectors: the impulsive, emotional System 1 and the logical, deliberate System 2. Knowing when you are using one—when you should be using the other—could be the key to better, more effective business decisions.
9. Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. Hugh MacLeod
MacLeod has ideas about everything, including standing out from your competitors and the meaning of life. His main subjects here are creativity and how to foster new ideas. A lively, illustrated guide to unleashing your ingenuity.
10. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
If you don’t take the title too literally, there are some valuable tips and time management strategies for living more and working less, including eliminating time sucks like e-mail.
11. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
To succeed in business, you must know how to communicate. Whether at a staff meeting, networking event, trade conference, or just a casual conversation with a coworker, business relies on communication. Crucial Conversations provides readers with the tools needed to master difficult conversations at work (and home).
12. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This is the definitive manual for gaining people’s trust and influencing them in favor of your ideas.
13. We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement by Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse
It’s rare to find a business book that speaks to both employees and business managers/leaders. It tackles the subject of employee engagement by dissecting what it means for both employers and business leaders alike.
14. The Wisdom of Failure: How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price. Laurence G. Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey
In this collaborative piece, the authors prefer instead to learn by not making the mistakes of individuals and businesses they researched during a seven-year study.
15. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.Laura Hillenbrand, 2014
Hillenbrand’s recounting of the story of Louie Zamperini is inspirational and instructive, reminding us all that we have courage far beyond our understanding.
16. The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Ben Horowitz 2014
To help other entrepreneurs through their journey, author shares the story of when his business nearly failed, how he staved off defeat, and how you can do hard things too.
17. Zero to One. Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, 2014
Masters took notes while taking a class from Thiel at Stanford, and it led to a groundbreaking book about the importance of unique business ideas.
18. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Charles Duhigg, 2012
In his exploration of habit, Duhigg expands on this idea, detailing how our habits are precursors for the events that make up our life—or business—success story.
19. How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses by Joe Pulizz Joe brings to light not just why you should build content, but how organizations big and small can produce compelling content to engage their audience and build a following.
20. Black Swan
In “The Black Swan,” investor-philosopher Taleb diagnoses the way people misguidedly lean on prediction as a way of moving through the world, and reveals how the most structured of systems are the most vulnerable to collapse — like the financial system in 2007.