1. The Hard Thing about Hard Thing

Author : Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.

While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

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2. Sam Walton: Made In America

Author : Sam Walton, John Huey

Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements. Sam shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.

In a story rich with anecdotes and the "rules of the road" of both Main Street and Wall Street, Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism that propelled him to lasso the American Dream.

3. Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service

Author : Ari Weinzweig

Entrepreneurial phenomenon Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the much-loved Zingerman's Deli, shares the secrets to providing world-class customer service. Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a beloved deli with some of the most loyal clientele around. It has been praised for its products and service in media outlets far and wide, including the New York Times, Men's Journal, Inc. Magazine, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, and Fast Company. And what started out as a small deli has grown to a flourishing restaurant, catering service, bakery, mail-order operation, creamery, and training business.

Booming business and loyal customers are proof enough that the Zingerman's team knows a thing or two about customer service. Now in Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service, co-founder Ari Weinzweig shares the unique Zingerman method of treating customers, giving the reader step-by-step instructions on what to teach staff, how to train them, how to implement the training, how to measure their success, and finally, how to reward performance.

4. Managing Oneself

Author : Drucker

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: with ambition, drive, and talent, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't managing their knowledge workers' careers. Instead, you must be your own chief executive officer. That means it's up to you to carve out your place in the world and know when to change course. And it's up to you to keep yourself engaged and productive during a career that may span some 50 years. In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker explains how to do it. The keys: Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself by identifying your most valuable strengths and most dangerous weaknesses. Articulate how you learn and work with others and what your most deeply held values are. Describe the type of work environment where you can make the greatest contribution. Only when you operate with a combination of your strengths and self-knowledge can you achieve true and lasting excellence. Managing Oneself identifies the probing questions you need to ask to gain the insights essential for taking charge of your career. Peter Drucker was a writer, teacher, and consultant. His thirty-four books have been published in more than seventy languages. He founded the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and counseled thirteen governments, public services institutions, and major corporations.

5. Behind the Cloud

Author : Marc Benioff, Carlye Adler

How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

6. Who Moved My Cheese?

Author : Dr Spencer Johnson

Written by renowned author, speaker and management speaker Dr. Spencer Johnson and introduced by Kenneth Blanchard, 'Who Moved My Cheese?’ is a world famous, motivational tale shedding light on how to deal with change in an organization and as well as in personal life. It is a simple story that illustrates how people must embrace change and should adapt to new situations with open mind and motivated spirit.

Compiled as a hilarious story, the book revolves around Sniff and Scurry, two mice, who are also the main characters in the story and two little people Hem and Haw. All these four imaginary characters highlight how human mind work when it comes to change. While the word “cheese” is used as a representation for all the desires one wishes for in life—whether it be a loving and blossoming relationship, good job, health or spiritual peace of mind.

7. Our Iceberg is Melting

Author : John Kotter

A simple fable with profound lessons for working and living in an ever changing world. This charming story about a penguin colony in Antarctica illustrates key truths about how deal with the issue of change: handle the challenge well and you can prosper greatly; handle it poorly and you put yourself at risk. The penguins are living happily on their iceberg as they have done for many years. Then one curious penguin discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home-and pretty much no one listens to him. The characters in this fable are like people we recognise, even ourselves. Their story is one of resistance to change and heroic action, confusion and insight, seemingly intractable obstacles and the most clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles. It is a story that is occuring in different forms around us today - but the penguins handle change a great deal better than most of us. Based on John Kotter's pioneering work on how to make smart change happen faster and better, the lessons you can learn from this short and easy-to-read book will serve you well in your job, in your family, and in your community. And these lessons are becoming ever more important as the world around us changes faster and faster.

8. Les 4 Disciplines de l'Execution

Author : Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling

"This book describes the philosophy that was used to transform Washington, D.C., into the vibrant city it is today and what is also our philosophy at Phone2Action. It outlines four disciplines to achieve company success, including focusing on the wildly important (e.g., focusing on less in order to accomplish more) and keeping a scoreboard (letting people know how they are performing on an ongoing basis). The principle I found most useful was 'act on the lead measures.' Success is based on two measures: leading and lagging. We normally pay attention to lagging measures, such as revenue and profit. However, lead measures--the activities team members are doing every day to drive growth--are more important and in the end will drive the growth and revenue. This book has not only helped me prioritize my time but also has made me a better manager and has helped me achieve my desired business outcomes."

9. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Author : Al Ries, Jack Trout

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors. Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:

10. Hyper Sales Growth

Author : Jack Daly

An absolutely vital book for anyone trying to create a business, which is now and remains my foremost passion in life. Daly's book details the forgotten art of sales: not how to convince someone to buy from you, but how to make it so that you never need to. The entire key to maintaining growth is building relationships with your customers instead of treating them like a piggy bank; customers respond to respect more than pressure. I sorely wish I'd had a book like this when I was starting out TransPerfect and hadn't had to learn those lessons the hard way. And everyone thinking of starting a business should start right here so they can learn the critical truth of how to show the customer you care more about helping them than making the sale.