Recommended Books
Many business leaders learn how to run their companies by getting an MBA. But for those dedicated to the sharing and challenging of each other’s business practices in the pursuit of building a great company, there’s a different set of textbooks waiting to be read. Not just a collection of stories, these books provide the blueprints and insights behind the success of Small Giants companies. From visioning to open book management and everywhere in between, there’s no shortage of genuine takeaways.-
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
Bo Burlingham
It’s a widely accepted axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, some entrepreneurs have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do . . . creating a great place to work . . . providing great customer service . . . making great contributions to their communities . . . and finding great ways to lead their lives.
In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable privately held companies, in widely varying industries across the country, that have chosen to march to their own drummer. He searches for the magic ingredients that give these companies their unique “mojo” and the lessons we can learn from them.
The Great Game of Business: Unlocking the Power and Profitability of Open-Book Management
Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. That’s when a green young manager, Jack Stack, took over and turned it around. He didn’t know how to “manage” a company, but he did know about the principal, of athletic competition and democracy: keeping score, having fun, playing fair, providing choice, and having a voice. With these principals he created his own style of management— open-book management. The key is to let everyone in on financial decisions. At SRC, everyone learns how to read a P&L—even those without a high school education know how much the toilet paper they use cuts into profits. SRC people have a piece of the action and a vote in company matters. Imagine having a vote on your bonus and on what businesses the company should be in. SRC restored the dignity of economic freedom to its people. Stack’s “open-book management” is the key—a system which, as he describes it here, is literally a game, and one so simple anyone can use it.
Smile Guide: Employee Perspectives on Culture, Loyalty, and Profit
Paul Spiegelman
Why is a company with a positive culture such an exception these days? Employee loyalty drives customer satisfaction, which in turn drives profit: this is the key to success for Smile Guide author Paul Spiegelman, and a philosophy he’s coined as the Circle of Growth™. If compassionate, ethical enterprises became the rule instead of the exception, businesses would be much better positioned to create more sustainable employment and greater long-term growth. This is where Spiegelman’s tried-and-true people-centric business model comes in. Building a solid culture program is a long process of hard work, but Smile Guide will provide the tips and tools needed to employ a proven means of generating small impacts that will transform your organization for the better.
Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow
Chip Conley
After a long climb to the pinnacle of the hospitality industry, Chip Conley—CEO and founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality—was rocked to his foundation by a dramatic economic downturn. His company was suddenly undercapitalized and overexposed in the post-dot.com, post-9/11 economy. This desperate situation made Conley reaffirm his belief in psychologist Abraham Maslow’s iconic concept of the Hierarchy of Needs and rely on Maslow’s theory of human motivation to help his business flourish once more.
In Peak, Conley explores how Joie de Vivre —the second largest boutique hotelier in the world—overcame the storm that hit the travel industry by applying translations of Maslow’s ideas to his company’s winning business practices. Part memoir, part theory, and always practical, accessible, and engaging, Peak offers a behind-the-scenes look at Joie de Vivre’s remarkable transformation. By creating loyalty with employees, customers, and investors, Conley was able to turn his company around and experience sustained success.
Throughout the book, Chip Conley provides real-world examples from other companies including Google, Whole Foods Market, Harley-Davidson, and Southwest Airlines, and shows how anyone can bring similar changes to their own work and personal lives. Peak reveals the miracle of human potential and shows what can happen when employees live up to their full potential, customers are completely transformed by the experience they receive, and investors are fulfilled by leveraging the potential of their capital.
Whether you are a start-up entrepreneur or in management at a Fortune 500 company, the principles outlined in Peak will help you maximize your own potential and the potential of those around you.
Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Co.
Gary Erickson with Lois Lorentzen
In April of 2000, Gary Erickson turned down a $120 million offer to buy his thriving company. Today, instead of taking it easy for the rest of his life and enjoying a luxurious retirement, he’s working harder than ever. Why would any sane person pass up the financial opportunity of a lifetime?
Raising the Bar tells the amazing story of Clif Bar’s Gary Erickson and shows that some things are more important than money. Gary Erickson and coauthor Lois Lorentzen tell the unusual and inspiring story about following your passion, the freedom to create, sustaining a business over the long haul, and living responsibly in your community and on the earth. Raising the Bar chronicles Clif Bar’s ascent from a homemade energy bar to a $100 million phenomenon with an estimated 35 million consumers, and a company hailed by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. four years in a row. The book is filled with compelling personal stories from Erickson’s life-trekking in the Himalayan mountains, riding his bicycle over roadless European mountain passes, climbing in the Sierra Nevada range—as inspiration for his philosophy of business. Throughout the book, Erickson—a competitive cyclist, jazz musician, world traveler, mountain climber, wilderness guide, and entrepreneur—convinces us that sustaining one’s employees, community, and environment is good business.
If you are a manager, executive, business owner, or board member, Raising the Bar is your personal guide to corporate integrity. If you are a sports enthusiast, environmentalist, adventure lover, intrigued by a unique corporate culture, or just interested in a good story, Raising the Bar is for you.
The Street-Smart Entrepreneur: 133 Tough Lessons I Learned the Hard Way
Jay Goltz
Small firms in Chicago employ more than 1.6 million individuals—nearly 50 percent of the private work force, according to a new study released this fall by the Small Business Administration. The survey, which defines small firms as those employing less than 500 people, also shows that these businesses generate 47 percent of the area’s total receipts of $278 billion dollars. However, SBA statistics also reveal that, on average, of the small businesses starting today, 53 percent will not be in business four years from now. Of these closings, it’s estimated that 15 percent will close due to business failures. Chicago businessman Jay Goltz understands what it takes for a small business to succeed. During the past twenty years he has owned and operated Artists’ Frame Service in Chicago. Goltz started the business in 1978, and today it’s the largest, custom retail picture framing facility in the world. Now, Goltz shares some his secrets of success.
No Man’s Land: What to Do When Your Company Is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big
Doug Tatum
If starting a company is difficult, leading a company once the business has caught fire is infinitely more so. Thousands each year approach the dangerous transition that Doug Tatum calls No Man’s Land—when they are too big to be considered small but still too small to be considered big.
Rapid growth is every entrepreneur’s dream, but it never comes easily and is usually rife with dilemmas. During No Man’s Land, as in human adolescence, such growth should spark self- discovery, acquired discipline, and positive but difficult transition. Unfortunately, it often becomes an agonizing battle between the natural tendencies of a lonely entrepreneur and certain immutable laws of growth. The result is confusion, frustration, stagnation, loss of employee morale, and, at worst, financial failure.
Sounds pretty bleak. The good news is that Doug Tatum knows exactly what it takes to get through No Man’s Land: a map, a high place from which to orient yourself, and navigational rules to help you track your progress. And these tools are here in this book.
If you’re an entrepreneur, this book will help you make your company all it can be and all you want it to be. It will prepare you for a ride that just might be wilder than you ever imagined.
Why Is Everyone Smiling? The Secret Behind Passion, Productivity, and Profit
Paul Spiegelman
How many small businesses have a full-time employee whose official title is Queen of Fun and Laughter? How many have a CEO and COO who dress in matador outfits for a company holiday video version of “Dancing with the Stars?” Beryl is a “Top Small Workplace” because of one secret—its focus on people. Visitors report they feel the “vibe” when they walk in the door.
As a call center company, a business normally known for high turnover, low morale, and a boiler room environment, Beryl created a special culture resulting in low attrition, high customer loyalty, and profits reinvested in employees. What Beryl does behind the scenes to take care of the needs of its internal family sets it apart. It operates with a true spirit of camaraderie; the loyalty of team members at every level; a leadership team that operates with a true servant mindset; and a CEO, Paul Spiegelman, who believes that everyone deserves a chance to feel important. He rewards people frequently, respects their efforts and opinions, and informs them of everything that impacts them. He gave away his car to an employee who walked to work, replaced another’s Christmas gifts when her apartment was robbed, bought a plane ticket for an employee to visit his dying mother, and sits for hours in a Santa costume while Beryl kids climb on his lap. Even the company name, defined as “a family of gems,” illustrates the emphasis on coworkers, the people who created the vibe behind his secret to passion, productivity, and profit.
Read his book about how Beryl changes lives and discover how you can implement the same techniques to make your company a top place to work.
Setting the Table The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
Danny Meyer
In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City’s most revered restaurants—Union Square Cafe. Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world’s most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game. How has he done it? How has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?
In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he’s learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls “enlightened hospitality.” This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors. This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved.
Full of behind-the-scenes history on the creation of Danny’s most famous restaurants and the anecdotes, advice, and lessons he has accumulated on his long and ecstatic journey to the top of the American restaurant scene, Setting the Table is a treasure trove of innovative insights that are applicable to any business or organization.
The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up
Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham
People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or specific rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran entrepreneur Norm Brodsky, there’s a mentality that helps street-smart people solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. He calls it “the knack,” and it has made all the difference to the eight successful start-ups of his career.
Brodsky explores this mind-set every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular column he co-writes with journalist and author Bo Burlingham (best known for his acclaimed book Small Giants). In both their column and now their book, they tell stories about real companies facing real challenges, and show readers how to apply “the knack” to their own businesses.
The New Small: How a New Breed of Small Businesses is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies
Phil Simon
A small seafood restaurant attracts new customers with virtually no marketing budget. An iPad case manufacturer generates more than $1M in revenue in four months with only four employees. A voice-over company is able to connect thousands of artists with opportunities, all without expensive hardware and software. A law firm increases access to key information while dramatically reducing technology-related costs and risks.
And these four companies are hardly unique. A new breed of small businesses is using Software as a Service (SaaS), free and open source software, social media and networks, mobility, cloud computing, and other emerging technologies to do things simply not possible even five years ago.
Discover how small businesses creatively and intelligently use technology to reach new customers, reduce costs, increase internal collaboration and communication, and create flexible work environments.
Rife with profiles from a wide variety of industries, The New Small offers pragmatic advice and lessons about how small businesses are harnessing the power of emerging technologies. It’s a must-read for small business owners, those thinking about starting their own shops, and those who work for larger outfits intent on capturing the agility and spirit of a group of dynamic companies.
Be Useful
Jeroen Geelhoed and Salem Samhound
Many people walk around with good entrepreneurial ideas. They see opportunities to start their own business, to develop a product or service within an existing organization or a new societal initiative. However, in reality it turns out that out of all these ideas only 7% realized successfully. Not only is that wasteful, it’s also unnecessary!
With this book Jeroen Geelhoed and Salem Samhoud want to demonstrate that there is an alternative. They are convinced that entrepreneurship can be learnt, provided you want it. In a clear and interesting style, they describe the steps that form the basis of successful realization. By way of inspiration, various countries that excel in entrepreneurship are highlighted, such as Singapore, the USA and New Zealand. Moreover, the authors give the floor to numerous entrepreneurs from all over the world. This book thus provides all the necessary tools for successful entrepreneurship. So use your freedom, take responsibility and be useful!
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