Sun Tzu · ★★★★★ · 170 pages · -500

Been meaning to reread this for a while. Sun Tzu’s theories can be just as well used for business (minus all the killing). Something that I definitely need to reread frequently.

James P. Womack · ★★★★☆ · 396 pages · 1996

Kaizen and reducing waste. Mostly in the context of a manufacturing plant but I feel most of these ideas have been taken in by The Lean Startup movement.

Richard Koch · ★★★★☆ · 288 pages · 2013

Book about applying he 80/20 rule to management. He goes over 10 principles but I found 2 of them most valuable to think about:

Eliyahu M. Goldratt · ★★★★★ · 384 pages · 1984

One of the best business books I’ve read which is in the form of a fictional factory that is losing money and how the character goes through implementing the lean methods. Though some of the dialogue gets into the weeds of different concepts the main ones seem to be 1) throughput, how efficiently are things going through the chain 2) the notion that the limiting factor in the assembly line is the weakest link. So the overall efficiency in the system is limited by the weakest link. 3) that efficient doesn’t mean using every resource all the time. Sometimes it makes sense for resources and people to idle since them doing work can lead to inventory which can create cost.

Perry Marshall · ★★★☆☆ · 230 pages · 2013

Sort of a continuation of the 80/20 principle from Koch and how to use it in modern marketing and sales. Segmentation, have someone else do the 80 percent where you are not delivering value, learn to give up 80/20 at times or you will be seen as a grinch. All good advice

Jeffrey Gitomer · ★★★☆☆ · 230 pages · 2004

The beginning started like Glengarry Glen Ross and initially turned me off since I thought it was a book teaching old school sales techniques but thankfully it does get better. Here are the principles and what I thought about them.

Richard Koch · ★★★★★ · 336 pages · 1997

One of those books that I should have read in my early 20s. However, I seem to have naturally taken on to its message by focusing on the 20% I have been good at which provides 80% of the value. The book itself seems to be structured in an 80/20 Rule way. I definitely got a lot of value from the business aspect of the 80/20 rule, and have organized my tasks to optimize for those, but some of the things in relation to personal aspect of 80/20 Rule can be left to interpretation depending on the type of person you are. If you like social interaction having a lot of connection may give you joy, versus if you are shy then having fewer connections is what you may be seeking.

Matthew Dixon · ★★★★☆ · 242 pages · 2011

The whole worth of this book is literally one chapter and the rest of it seems to be filler. But that chapter makes this one of the better sales books I read.

Marylou Tyler · ★★★☆☆ · 292 pages · 2016

Book about prospecting for sales. While useful I feel like the content has been written elsewhere and some of the content could have been a bit deeper.

Aaron Ross · ★★★★☆ · 241 pages · 2011

This books seems to be a classic in sales in Silicon Valley. It can actually be divided into three different sections. The section on prospecting via sending drip campaigns, two on how to divide the prospecting from the account manager role, and three how to lead a sales organization. The first two sections were most useful to me. The prospecting aspect of things were interesting though not new. After this books was written I suppose all of sales has sort of taken on and run with these ideas.

Robert Maurer · ★★★★☆ · 204 pages · 2009

A book about personal kaizen. On specifically how to gradually improve yourself with very, very small questions and asks as opposed to doing very large changes that you may crash trying to implement. Good book if you don’t know kaizen but also good read on how to affect change and apply it to your personal life.

Mark Hunter · ★★★★☆ · 206 pages · 2016

I like the author’s no bullshit take on how to do sales prospecting, where to spend time and where to avoid time sinks. Essentially, lot more based on traditional sales of cold calling but I don’t know if that works for the specific industry that I am in. Some great ways of understanding and approaching sales from multiple mediums and combining email, social media and calling. Wish he went a little bit deeper into certain aspects of finding leads but his advice was quite good and I guess his advice is if you can provide a company value then they are a lead. Good for an engineer turned sales guy like me.

Angela Duckworth · ★★☆☆☆ · 277 pages · 2016

I usually always finish books but this book could have used a little editing and could have gotten the point across in half the length. There are just too many examples that make the underlying message lost.

Bill McGowan · ★★★★☆ · 288 pages · 2014

Took me a while to read this one. Lots of good advice but does get a little specific at times to different circumstance which can get a tad boring if you never expect to be in those positions. But lots of good principles like: tell a story, slow down, practice, ask for advice rather than a favor, etc.

Scott Adams · ★★★★★ · 336 pages · 1996

Though a book that was written in the early 90s, most of the things that this book refer to has not changed at all in my career in the 2010s. After reading so many business books that have a theoretical bend to how to deal with human interaction, Scott Adams covers the nuts and bolts of actual human interaction and grounds you into how an actual office job is like. Granted many of the things that this book talks about have happened in my career.

Timothy Ferriss · ★★★☆☆ · 827 pages · 2016

Jonathan Gottschall · ★★★★☆ · 304 pages · 2015

I would say this part memoir, part a social understanding of male violence, and part him making fun of his colleagues because he was an English Adjunct Professor. It was interesting read because it covered some interesting aspects of how violence is transmitted socially but I thought Demonic Males was a better read for that.

Chet Richards · ★★★☆☆ · 188 pages · 2004

David Nour · ★★★☆☆ · 305 pages · 2017

The book is a bit all over the place but covers most things that the Lean Startup and the lean movement have brought. The one insight that I thought was valuable was the idea of the Hollywood Model of running a company being the norm in the future instead of the traditional top down hierarchy.

David Allen · ★★★★☆ · 286 pages · 2003

Marking It All Work is a continuation of the GTD work that Allen has done continuing on the theme of how to make life and work more productive. I am not a strict adherent to GTD but maybe do 60% of the tasks that Allen recommends and even just doing that has been great to focus me into what I am trying to achieve and create.