N + 1 useful book for business: part 3

Hello!
The past two reviews of useful books for 2010 and 2011 have collected just a hell of a number of bookmarks, so I will continue. Another year passed, about 250 more books read - and here are the most interesting ones under the cut.

Who said elephants can't dance? Reviving IBM Corporation: An Inside Look (Gerstner Louis)

Excellent book about how to restore IBM. What from the outside looked like an unsystematic movement of assets and a sequence of orders without much sense, after a few years began to take shape into a single system.
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Overtake the Hare (Stephen Spear)

Excellent book about debag production processes. One of the main things is that all serious problems arise due to a combination of non-critical bugs. There are examples from the American nuclear program, NASA, etc. I suggest right now to go and read the description of the railway crash on Kamenskaya : one did not report, the second did not check the brakes, the third squeezed the PTT, the fourth tore the emergency brake. The result is a catastrophe.

No Logo. People against brands (Naomi Klein)

One of the best books about branding, telling not about how to draw logos and talk to customers, but about how big companies destroy everything around them, break thousands of lives and deceive people. In general, such a downside of a large and bright business. Reads like an exciting detective story.

How to overcome management crises (Yitzhak Adizes)

An amazing book for two reasons. First, it has an empty chapter. More precisely, it contains only one phrase, explaining that the author has no practical data on this situation. For this author alone can be infinitely respected. And secondly, the book develops a very interesting concept of team building. Yitzhak is sure that the manager has 4 main genes: the entrepreneur's gene, who says, “let's do it,” the administrator's gene, “what about the contract and where are the guarantees of payment,” the arsonist gene, “I have an awesome an idea! ”and an integrator gene that helps establish relationships in a team. At the same time, all four genes are not found in one person - and, accordingly, we need a team that provides the optimal scheme for the company. For example, at the initial stage of business, you need to work a lot and sleep a little - you need a gene entrepreneur. Next, you need the administrator's gene to stabilize the processes and control the growing body, plus the arsonist gene for constant movement forward. And integration is needed when the company should not fall apart immediately after the CEO leaves for a month on vacation. The book deals with various management mistakes - it will be somewhat painful to read it, but it is very useful.

Measuring Company Performance

This strange thing would never have been useful to me in reality if not for the growth of our business. A couple of years ago, it turned out that at some point you need to very carefully calculate all the indicators in the chain in order to understand what works and what does not. The book provides a methodology for determining project performance not only in money, but, more importantly, in other indicators - for example, customer satisfaction.

How to swim among sharks and not be eaten alive (Harvey Mackay)

It is impossible to read Russian books about business: simply no one has yet built a working business to share practice. Specifically, McKay interested me in that he managed to enter the conservative market and quickly get a fairly large share there. He sold envelopes in the United States — at the same time, as he said, he could not distinguish his rival’s products from his own, even holding the envelope in his hands. And in these conditions it is impossible to compete on the properties of the goods (envelopes are the same), at a price (and so on at the minimum level), he was able to ensure the efficiency of the company’s work on the one hand and excellent customer service on the other. True, is it worth at least to listen to his conclusions?

Great events (Alexander Shumovich)

Good educational program for the domestic event-management. Full of advertising company author more than half, but still gives useful things.

The art of recruitment (Svetlana Ivanova)

The first time I took this book in my hand and thought: “To hell, another collection of typical HR questions about round hatches.” The second time I looked through the book with interest. The third time I re-read after six months of interviews and understood how important not the form itself, but the methodology behind it. In general, I recommend both to those who are looking for people and to those who do not understand why they are not technically eligible for appropriate vacancies.

The Perfection Myth (Ryan Matthews, Fred Crawford)

One of the most useful books in the last couple of years. Here are just a couple of theses: 1) the client chooses not the lowest prices, but the most honest (really reasonable) and 2) poor service 10 times ahead of such indicators as the level of customer failures such as price level, product quality and so on. The authors cite as an example the study of the reasons that prompted to buy cars of a certain brand. Initially, they wanted to compare advertising, price level, service at the outlet and technical specifications of the cars - but it turned out that most of the customers made the decision, because the answering woman had a very beautiful voice, plus she was very kind. By the way, the book may well be on a par with last year's Good to Great, very beloved on Habré.

Distribution Channel Management (Linda Gorchels, Ed Marien, Chuck West)

A great system guide on how to organize logistics. Surprisingly, the authors went a little further than the truisms and at the same time told about the things that actually only come with experience. In general, if you are not a retailer, you don’t need it, but if you produce or sell something, I recommend it.

Perfomance management (M. Armstrong, A. Baron)

Enough technological book describing management techniques, their advantages, disadvantages and frequent mistakes. The most important thing is that the checklists contain what you need to remember to do if you manage a team. From the banal "not only set the task, but immediately make sure that the employee understood it by asking questions about execution" before enough system things. Boring, but necessary.

A complaint is a gift (Janelle Barlow)

A simple thing about the approach to negative customer complaints, as an excellent source of data for debag in the company. Barlow continued the formula: "A satisfied customer will tell the three, a dissatisfied one - ten, and a dissatisfied one you returned - to a hundred."

Motivaction - Action Motivation (Klaus Kobjoll)

This is a story about how the hotel motivates its staff to work. In practice, the topic is wider: here is a couple of good PR ideas, and a whole lot about the company's efficiency, plus customer service. It is worth scrolling, despite the rather small thickness of the book.

Tutorial on the development of thinking (Edward de Bono)

At school, we had a poster about TRIZ above the entrance to the physics office. I was looking forward to the 11th grade to go through this unusual subject - but it turned out that only a couple of lessons were devoted to the topic. Apparently, this book just became the missing textbook on TRIZ in the American version. At least, it is worthwhile to read as an abstract work on thinking (or better before that - a textbook on cognitive psychology, if you have not read it yet).

Willpower (Kelly McGonigal)

Nice science fiction thing about GTD. Pleases a bunch of descriptions of experiments. What impressed most was the fact that the good old experiment with a rat and an electrode in the center of pleasure was not so straightforward: it turned out that they were not in the center of pleasure, but in the center of "motivation", that is, the rat was dying, thinking that if she pressed again on the lever - that's when happiness comes.

Laykni me (Gary Vaynerchuk)

It is very interesting to read books year after year, as a kind of slow forum. For example, Ziman in his “The End of Marketing” began the topic of interaction with the client, then a brilliant practical book about Zappos came out, and then this “Like me”, a kind of summing up. In short, one has to take and read, because there is about social networks and the author’s specific practice of working with them.

Great ones of their own choice (Jim Collins and Morten Hansen)

The continuation of “Good to Great” is no longer so full of facts, but still useful. Two main points: first you need to do short tests and not risk everything, then start the main process, plus at start-up - do the same amount of work possible every day. Good examples, very sobering in some moments. By the way, buying a book, you buy only half a book: the second half is the raw data of research, which, of course, inspire, but very few people will be useful.

Where to get

I remind you that at least half of the books can be found in open sources, but some are only available in paper. For example, I advise you to download “No Logo”, “Overtake the Hare” and a book about IBM.

Crowd councils

Please attach, in the comments, good business books that you have read in a year, I will raise them in the topic in this section. Just look first at the first and second annual book reviews, so as not to repeat.

• @madmaxcorp suggested “Startup for $ 100”, Chris Guillebeau - real examples of how people built their business are discussed. “Pumpkin Method”, Mike Michalowicz - about strategy, analysis of the quality of a product or service, assessment and ranking of clients, financing planning, selection of promising employees.
• @rie proposed a textbook on game theory.
• @ivanr - “Hard time management: Take control of your life.” about motivation for self-organization and “Long tail. Effective business model on the Internet "for practitioners and on the expansion of the range.
• @darthslider - the work of art “Atlas Shrugged.”
• @KuMak recommends the good old Funky Business.
• @GraDea - Edwards Deming - Overcoming the crisis. A new paradigm of managing people, systems and processes.
• @vdustinov recommends another small list .

PS And again, I ask you not to bookmark this topic - if you want to read, look now. Adding to favorites is a great way to convince yourself that you have done something for your development, and without doing anything in fact.