The Best Business Books You Must Read in 2021

Today we talk about The Best Business Books You Must Read in 2021. We know every corporate executive is different from ordinary employees. Most of them have heavy responsibilities and are directly responsible for the future of the company.

As a manager, if you want to know the image of your company in the eyes of the public, you can learn about it through multiple channels.

For example, you can visit customers, shareholders, business media, and financial analysts to let them express their views on your company. However, the most not to be ignored should be the employees of the company. Only by listening carefully to their voices can you better understand the situation of the company.

Mayo, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, once said: “Any employees in a company who complain about their work, the boss of that company must listen to their voices. This is easier to succeed than letting employees bury their complaints in their stomachs.”

An American psychologist once did a valuable experiment: The experiment lasted for two years. Within two years, two groups of experts continued to talk to employees, but they used different methods. During the conversation, a group of experts listened carefully to the various dissatisfaction and opinions of the employees towards the company and made detailed records.

Another group of experts talked to employees of another company, but in the conversation, they constantly refuted and reprimanded the employees for their dissatisfaction with the company. In two years, they had more than 20,000 conversations with employees.

As a result, they found that the production efficiency of the former company has greatly improved, while the production efficiency of the latter company has become more and more sluggish.

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After researching, the psychologist came to the conclusion that the employees of the previous family felt comfortable after venting, so they were very motivated. Later, employees of a company had nowhere to vent their dissatisfaction, feeling down, and becoming less and less motivated to work. This shows how important it is for the development of the company to listen to the voices of employees.

If you want to be successful, you must encourage others to achieve excellent results. To be able to inspire others, you need to be more authentic, more empathetic, and more attractive. You need to learn to tell stories and really listen, you need to understand why you want to assert your own strong opinions, and you need to value the signals you unconsciously convey.

You need books every entrepreneur should read and learn how to articulate an inspiring vision and how to lead important conversations that may change the landscape. The combination of these communication skills will make you extremely efficient.

Whether managers value employees, whether the company's system, salary, and work arrangements satisfy employees can only be understood by listening to the voices of employees. If managers do not know how to listen to the voices of employees and even put pressure everywhere to prevent employees from expressing their voices, then the company will lose hope.

Of course, there is the most important point, a CEO or corporate executive must understand strategy!

Strategy is the theory about how companies gain a competitive advantage.

Specifically:

• strategy is a strategy rather than a tactic;
• strategy is a model rather than a fixed formula;
• strategy is a compass rather than a map;
• strategy is an idea rather than a fashion.

Strategic management is the soul of business operations. There have been advances from management experts: Three years of development rely on opportunities, and ten years of development rely on strategies.

In other words, only with a strategy that is positioned to obtain a long-term competitive advantage can the resources and core capabilities of an enterprise exert their power like an atomic bomb.

In addition, if our business fails, the biggest possibility is that our strategy is wrong. Because strategy is the direction of business operations, the direction is wrong, and efforts are in vain.

To sum up, in the ever-changing business competition, entrepreneurs must constantly adapt to the times and try new measures, but the road to change is always full of challenges, focusing on business topics that ambitious business owners and CEOs care about and are troubled by most, and assist them in acquiring more valuable knowledge and recognition in the most enlightening way. Know oneself, manage employees, lead change and innovation, etc. so as to achieve personal growth and improvement of organizational performance.

No matter what kind of industry the company is in, what stage of development, and what kind of management ability basis you have as a leader, what kind of education or training you have received.

If you don’t read anything else, below I will be recommended The 15 Best Business Books You Must Read in 2021.

Must-Read Business Books Recommended by Entrepreneurs

Table Of Contents

1. How to Win Friends & Influence People

2. The One Thing

3. The E-Myth Revisited

4. Company of One

5. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

6. Influence

7. The Lean Startup

8. Outliers

9. Tools of Titans

10. The Power of Broke

11. Zero to One

12. The Compound Effect

13. The 4-Hour Work Week

14. The Great Crash 1929

15. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?

The Best Business Books You Must Read in 2021

1. How to Win Friends & Influence People

Book Review: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This book became a household name more than ten years ago, and there were always recommendations in the mail-order book advertisements in the middle of the best-selling "Reader" magazine. I have just graduated from high school and have not yet entered society. The so-called social interaction is only in the single relationship of classmates.

The family also treats us as children. Any ignorant words and deeds are tolerated. People who like it will be relieved from each other. Those who do not like it. People stay away. "The Weakness of Human Nature" was read as a collection of short stories, and there was not much difference between my effectiveness and "Story Club" at that time.

After entering society after work, no one is an island. Effective communication skills are so important. There are many people you should let go of your prejudices and cooperate with them, or you need to win the favor of the other party in the process of sales.

As a superior, you need to guide employees. As a subordinate, sometimes you need to motivate the leader. 80% of the effect of communication is the emotion in the communication process, and 20% is the content of the communication. This book guides that 80%.

To sum up, I feel that this book is still worth reading, and some chapters can be reviewed repeatedly. Although the author is based on the Western thinking environment, there may be some methods that are not suitable for Eastern culture, but I believe that the principles are the same.

Look for another way of dealing with others in our most accustomed and self-behavior styles, integrating the actual situation and specific occasions, and making others willing and willing to accept themselves sincerely and skillfully. After all, as a gregarious species, we often need external affirmation and cooperation.

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2. The One Thing

Book Review: The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

This book is easy to read. The language is too simple and the logic is not rigorous enough. Such a book can cater to the taste of the general public. The author of the book is not a scholar, so the language organization is not as rigorous as an academic paper.

But there are three very interesting pictures, which I think are more thought-provoking. In fact, we all understand the truth, but expressing it more intuitively can deepen the impression and comprehend more deeply.

One image expresses a thousand words.

Picture 1: Mediocre We are often prone to fall into a "normal day", that is, spend a lot of time on other unimportant things, so it is easy to feel empty and full at the end of the day. But if we can consciously exercise ourselves to achieve an "efficient day", that is, we consciously spend time on the most important things. The result of expressing our day in such a pie chart is worthy of reflection, reflecting on how much of the pie your most important things account for.

Picture 2: Be a responsible person. In the era of popular self-discipline, everyone said that self-discipline is the key to success in life. But I don’t think it’s accurate enough. I think self-discipline is just a basis. If you can’t restrain yourself to resist other temptations when you are doing anything, then this matter is not worth mentioning in the first place.

I think the more important factor is to be responsible. Responsible for your own choices, responsible for your own plans, if you encounter anything, you can ask yourself: "This is the end, what can I do?"

Figure 3: Many people believe in talent and innate IQ and EQ. I think it is an excuse that people give themselves not to work hard or they think that they can't do it and others can't do it. Setting limits on yourself is probably the difference between an ordinary life and a creative life. A purposeful life, and a pursuit to challenge, this life will not be in vain.

The subject of this book is a reminder for myself, a typical modern busy person. The typical modern busy person is to put himself in a state of multitasking forever, wishing to conjure up several things like Monkey King. This is why the dream is too big to cause trouble.

It’s a good thing to have a big dream, but if several things are done at the same time, the result is often that the quality is not good, either at the same time, or everything is not done ideally. I will never trust the bullshit of multitasking anymore.

Just focus on one thing right now, even if you admit that you are incapable of taking care of other things. To complete one thing with quality.

3. The E-Myth Revisited

Book Review: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

I just finished reading "Those Things You Must Go through in Entrepreneurship". I think this is a good book that every technician with entrepreneurial dreams must-read.

Starting from the entrepreneurial impulse that professionals are particularly prone to, it brings out the three identities that people who want to start a business must shoulder: entrepreneur, manager, and professional. These three identities complement each other, but they are separate.

The non-acceptance of each other leads to the dilemma of professionals unable to successfully transform from professionals to managers, and ultimately ends up in entrepreneurial failure. The second half of this book is to tell professionals how to build their own business to build an efficient small business.

If you don't know anything about entrepreneurship, but you have entrepreneurial ideas, this book may be your best choice. Although it is not too advanced knowledge, it is basic common sense. There are cases, opinions, and arguments that are very clear.

The author said that entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals all interact at the same time, and no one can do without each other. Give a simple example, ignoring other complex objective conditions. Just like the relationship between the emperor (entrepreneur) and marshal (manager) and soldiers (professionals).

The emperor decides the country's development strategy, and the need for development requires the expansion of the territory. When the emperor decided to develop the north, this dream could only be realized by the marshal. At this time, the marshal needs to lead the army all the way north but to attack the city, you need soldiers to die.

4. Company of One

Book Review: Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarvis

Core content: In fact, a company does not need to be bigger and stronger. It is also very good to be a small one-person company. For example, the author's own company, and some other companies that the author knows about. How to do it.

The core is to find areas where big companies are not good at doing well and do personal-to-personal services. Let customers feel the warmth of humanity and pay happily. For example, be more caring, use education instead of promotion, build more trusting relationships with customers, and use more technological tools to improve work efficiency.

Finally, there are some practical suggestions, such as finding a lawyer, registering a company, finding an accountant, etc.

Evaluation: The author is obviously not good at writing books (after all, he dropped out of school at 19 to work). The content is messy. There are some interesting things worth referring to.

But the core is actually those: first clarify what services you can provide, build trust with people, teach others for free, build your own professional image, build social capital, and then find a way to acquire a customer...

A few more, and then more through personal trust relationship to expand customers, and to maintain their existing customers, it is the general knowledge of these small business operations, which is still useful for people who don’t know.

What is lacking are three points:

• How to do the specific work (the author assumes that this is the professional skills of the reader),
• How to convert customers/negotiations/pricing (potential customers will not take the initiative to pay for themselves),
• Encounter How to deal with the problem (small personal companies are most likely to encounter all kinds of bad things and bad customers).

Without saying these core and most practical things, readers will find it difficult to build a one-man company on their own. But maybe it’s because the author is a Canadian with a larger heart, and the surrounding customers are also more kind.

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5. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Book Review: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

After reading the entire book, I reviewed the contents of the book should belong to a management book, and to be precise, it is entrepreneurial. Management skills and details in the development process of a large-scale company.

From this point of view, it is highly recommended that entrepreneurs whose company's products are on the right track read this book. Although the domestic and foreign environments are different, most of the techniques solve common human problems and are not related to the environment.

I don't know when I started talking about entrepreneurial topics around me gradually. What used to be a dense white-collar area has gradually become a preparation area for career transformation-this can also be regarded as a warning signal of the career ceiling.

Professionals who have accumulated a lot of work experience and professional knowledge, in order to avoid the trap of "the other's law" or the butcher of layoffs, began to consider the possibility of using their professional experience and contacts to work hard on their own.

Of course, a considerable part of this group of entrepreneurs is embracing big dreams and passions and embarking on a thorny road with an unpredictable future.

When most entrepreneurial books talk about how to do the right thing and don’t mess it up, Ben Horowitz will also tell you: What should you do when things are messed up, this is this book The core value of the book lies.

In addition, a large part of the content in the book is related to human resources issues. I personally think that a large part of the content is related to common sense issues in human resources, such as whether to recruit employees from a friend’s company, why one-on-one conversations, etc?

Wait. If you want to learn this aspect, you can look at professional books on human resources, which are more thorough and have more skills than this one. If someone wants to practice, he must try dialectical thinking.

6. Influence

Book Review: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

There is something worth thinking about in life, and we also need to think about it. To be an independent-minded person, do not fall into the trap set by the caring people in life.

I feel that the switch of thinking should be activated from the moment I have direct contact with people who are not in a close and friendly relationship. We don't think too much about others, but please allow us to be as geographical as possible.

However, friendly and intimate relationships are often used by others. This does not mean that we are always in a crisis-ridden environment, but not believing others may avoid more mistakes.

After reading many books on behavioral psychology and social psychology, this time I re-read the various examples and experiments listed in the book. Psychological factors are well understood, and I feel that I have narrowed the distance between Cialdini and the time when Cialdini wrote this book.

A good book is so awesome. You know the realm of the author, but you can only get closer to the realm of the author when you write the book by enriching your experience and knowledge and rereading it over and over again.

There are many mixed points in the book. For example, "occupying scarce resources" and "competing for scarce resources" are different. The former is for profit, and the latter is for satisfying psychological needs.

So the author is wrong to say that "we buy things for practicality, not for possession." It should be that both ingredients are available, but we should usually pay more attention to the former (practical value).

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