Top Business Books 2016

The author Frances Frei is a professor at Harvard, her focus is technology and operations management. So she knows what she is talking about.

The USA is a service economy to the tune of 80% of GDP. Unfortunately much of that service is bad. Most businesses only put service into their mission statement and act when customers complain. This leads to mediocre service.

In Uncommon Service, Frei explains how a business can deliver extraordinary service with ordinary employees.

One of my personal pet peeves is businesses that think their employees can do any amount of work, perfectly, every time. Inevitably nothing really gets done right. You have to prioritize and then communicate the priorities to your employees.

Frei shows you how good service can be used as a competitive weapon, particularly in difficult economic times.

Firstly, the title sounds a bit like a self-help book, the Power of Habit is not a self-help book. It's about how people have evolved the inclination to repeat actions that have had positive results in the past.

In marketing it's a well known fact, that it is cheaper to retain a customer or client, than it is to go out and get a new one. The Power of Habit looks at the whole process from getting someone to try something, for the first time, to the point where they buy the product or service repeatedly.

You may rightly point out that there have been quite a few books on this topic, however the Power of Habit does take a fresh approach, it is well written, well researched and I found it very useful.

One of the co-authors of this book is Reid Hoffman, he is a founder and chairman of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site like Facebook. Instead of linking to friends, you connect with work/business colleagues. Ironically, if you have never heard of LinkedIn, this book probably has the most to offer you.

It use to be that an employee in the USA would work for 1 to 3 businesses over the span of their life and do basically the same job, the whole time. Today you are likely to work with or for many more businesses and do many different jobs. To do well in this 'new world' you need to understand and build relationships with your peers.

Counter-intuitively the stronger links you build are as important as the weaker links. This is because the weaker links take you outside your traditional role and comfort zone. In my opinion The Start-up of You, is one of those books you just cannot afford not to read.

I hope you found top business books 2016 useful. If you have a business book you would like to recommend, please leave a comment. Go to Examples of Time Management Skills at Work for more of my writing.