Books with good ideas for an entrepreneur about building and leading a business
Team has a huge influence on business success. However, you don’t have to hire a large group of the best high-paid professionals on the market. Business is often driven by enthusiastic people who are comfortable working with you and your product. As you know, the history of Apple started at Steve Jobs’ garage and the students in the same dorm room created Facebook.
What skills does an entrepreneur need for business team building?
- self-organization;
- ability to create a project and make it unique;
- bargaining and negotiating skills;
- creativity;
- creating a corporate culture.
Storist experts have picked out inspiring books for entrepreneurs that will help to develop these skills in a short time.
Best books for startup entrepreneur for working with a team
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
Start with yourself. You are unlikely to work effectively as a team, if you are not well organized and don’t have a clear goal. Stephen Covey and his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” will teach you time management, and how to set the goals properly. Besides self-management, it will also help you to manage your team’s creative potential. How to inspire your group to come up with ingenious solutions: there are specific ideas in this book. The book is about 400 pages long.
“The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries
Team lives inside the project, so before inviting people to work, you need to set priorities right and create your product.
In this book, Eric Ries describes his personal (both good and bad) experience with new products, paying attention to relationships with the team. The book is a great asset for startuppers, experienced entrepreneurs, and for anybody who wants to create something and inspire his/her colleagues. The book is about 400 pages long.
“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”
(с) Eric Ries
“Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko
Lack of resources and uncertainty goes hand in hand with entrepreneurship. There is always not enough money in your budget, and it seems that interesting clients always ask for something impossible.
You need to find creative and out of the box solutions to struggle through these situations. To find a more affordable way, to adapt the client’s idea to your capabilities so that he will be satisfied, to find a way out of a dead end – this is all about creativity and audacity.
Audacity comes with believing in your ideas, while effective solutions come with a strong team and through discussions within it.
Reith’s company managed to save hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the creative idea. The company had offered famous soccer player Pele 125000 dollars just for tying his cleats before the match. It took less money than to put ad banners around the stadium. Each movement of legendary Pele was caught on camera, and it helped the company to raise sales and beat competitors.
“Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko will teach you how to generate ideas, find new approaches and how to become a master of creativity. If you learn to solve creative tasks – you will have learned to solve all tasks of an entrepreneur. Your team will take the rest of non-creative tasks. The book is about 350 pages long.
“The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick
People don’t always tell the truth, but any entrepreneur needs accurate information in order to make proper decisions.
Yet your employees might exaggerate their capabilities and hide consequences of their actions. This will create an illusion of stability for an entrepreneur, but illusions always get shattered by reality.
Right questions help you to understand other people’s motives. With “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick you will learn how to ask those questions. The skill of making proper questions will help you in both working with the team and with clients and partners. The book is about 400 pages long.
“Tribal Leadership” by Dave Logan, Halee Fischer-Wright, and John King
Corporate culture can be different. There are companies, where you can walk around the office in shorts and work three hours a day. In others, you have to wear a tuxedo and can’t leave the office until 5 pm. Both cultures can help you get things done and fit a lot of people.
“Tribal Leadership” by Dave Logan, Halee Fischer-Wright, and John King will help you in creating a corporate culture for your business. It describes five types of corporate culture and features of each one. After studying those, you will be able to set up the values and corporate culture of your business easily. At the same time, you will be able to find out during the interviews whether the candidate would be comfortable in your culture or would have a clash with it. The book is about 300 pages long.
“Everything is negotiable!” by Gavin Kennedy
The skill of negotiating is truly an entrepreneur’s freedom. Arranging with your supplier to send the materials to you earlier in order to deliver the product to your customer in time. Asking your employee to work overtime because you have to finish an important task. Organizing a roundtable discussion in case of conflicts inside your team. Bargaining with your partners or investors – you have to be able to negotiate with anyone.
With “Everything is negotiable!” by Gavin Kennedy you will learn to negotiate with the mindset of mutual benefit. After reading this book you will have learnt how to state your case so that your supplier will benefit from delivering you the materials earlier, the employee will be glad to help you, and conflicts will be resolved not in favor of a particular employee, but to the advantage of the whole company. The book is about 300 pages long.
“Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury
Imagine that you have met a great specialist for your team, but he/she wants a salary, which is higher than your budget. Yet hiring this person would be perfect for the project.
This situation can lead to one option: start bargaining. “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury will teach you how to benefit from bargaining, how to state your case confidently and even manipulate your opponent a little. The ideas of the book will set the principles, which will help you decide, when to continue negotiations and when to stop them. The book is about 350 pages long.
“Purple Cow” by Seth Godin
It will be an advantage if you build a business that people would dream to work for. In this case, you don’t have to think about motivation as much: people will be glad to receive your offer and to solve tasks for the project. It will also reduce employee turnover: people are unlikely to abandon what they enjoy.
This kind of business should be unique. Unique projects become not only a strong point of a resume, but often a huge part of life for an employee. They strive to make a career in such projects, to help its development and they get excited with its success almost as much as the owner of the project.
Seth Godin tells how to build a unique business. You will learn from his ideas how to stand out from a bunch of other similar projects on the market, and become such an outstanding one that the most badass specialists would dream to work with you. The book is about 300 pages.
How do startup entrepreneurs read books quickly and learn the information for good?
Ten books, hundreds of ideas – how do you apply all that in life? Actually, working with a team is a lot easier if you know what to do.
“Reading is good, action is better.”
(с) “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries
Storist helps you to apply knowledge in real life. We have already read those books for you, prepared short summaries, along with mini-courses for each book with interactive tests and tasks. It will take you just an hour to study the book and learn to apply the knowledge in practice.
You haven’t ever read books this way. Just try it already!
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