2 Key Takeaways from 5 Inspirational Business Books

2 Key Takeaways from 5 Inspirational Business Books

There are two ways in which learning, the search for motivation and inspiration can happen in business. One is of course by being on the job and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.  But it can also happen vicariously by reading and understanding what the thought leaders and business gurus have to say. While you are busy engaging with the first way of learning, we bring to you two key takeaways from five inspirational books in five essential areas of business to foster the second way of learning:

1. On Entrepreneurship:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers:

Ben Horowitz

Harper-Collins, 304 pages, Rs 395 on amazon.in, bhorowitz.com

"I LOVE this book and I love Ben Horowitz for writing a book that entrepreneurs can go back to over and over when they want to be reminded that this is hard and that it’s a common experience," says Kathleen Wright, founder of Piece & Co, a Chicago-based company connecting global artisans.

While most people claim that starting your own business and following your passion is a great thing, it is also a good thing for leaders to remember that everything can’t be sugar coated. Business also has big ups and downs and often involves having to take hard decisions. Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of VC company Andreessen Horowitz, and LoudCloud (later Ops-Ware), is one of Silicon Valley’s most experienced entrepreneurs. He draws on his own story to offer essential advice to tackle problems that business school will not equip you with, amplifying them through the lyrics of his favourite rap songs. He places the anecdotes and lessons in the context of actual journeys versus the outcomes and also makes the advice of other business mentors like Bill Campbell accessible.

Two key lessons from this book that entrepreneurs need to remember as they scale up are:

Control your own psychology and demons as a CEO and Founder, or you will be your own worst enemy. Not many people talk about it, though compared to other skills, it is one of the toughest to learn. His advice is to not quit even when the going gets really tough. He says, “When you’re in it, you are building a tremendous amount of knowledge about the company, the market, about the customer, and about the product. The longer you have to apply that, the better your chances are. If you can somehow stay in the box, then, amazingly, you might find yourself in a good position.”

Accept your fault in a lousy situation because you know the company best. For example, when you fire a top executive, you should recognise that these people are coming in with tremendous experience. The reason you are firing them is probably because you were not able to recognise that their skill sets did not fit the needs of your organisation. He also advises that the founders focus on building good communication architecture as the company grows and not let it get siloed. When everybody is on the same page, the company becomes a great place to work and 99 percent the work done actually impacts the company.

2. On Productivity:

Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Simon and Schuster, 256 pages, Rs 361 on amazon.in, theenergyproject.com, performanceprograms.com

"This book changed my relationship to both energy and time, and helped me build key life routines that I value to this day", says Justin Rosenstein, cofounder of online collaboration tool Asana.

This is a book about maximal productivity and living through working in rhythms. Loehr used to be a coach to some of the world’s top athletes when he realised that some of the fundamentals for maximising performance also apply to corporate athletes. The idea is that maximal productivity comes from managing your energy and not just your time and this can be done best when certain controllable factors are in the right places. What this book is trying to say is:

The energy you use and put out each day is variable – it comes back to the idea of self-management. You excel when you are focused on what you do and have strong boundaries between work and renewal. There is a very strong emphasis on taking time to recover.

Our energies are divided into different paradigms - physical, mental, spiritual and emotional - each of which is necessary but not sufficient by themselves. Physical energy forms the foundation of the energies. Emotional energy is how you feel about your performance and is at its peak when you are. Mental energy is the repository of concentration and focus, while spiritual energy connects your work to your core values and purposes. Each paradigm supports the other. Thus it is very important to take care of our bodies (physical) and our emotions in order to be able to maximise our focus (mental).

3. On Company Culture:

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose

Tony Hsieh

Hachette Book Group, 277 pages, Rs 430 on amazon.in, deliveringhappinessbook.com

"When you read this book, it’s impossible not to feel the adrenaline and get a tiny but impactful taste of what it was like to start and grow Zappos. It’s so interesting to see inside a company that has built a company culture and brand that has scaled," says Katia Beauchamp, cofounder of beauty products subscription service Birchbox.

Delivering Happiness, a book by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos (an online shoe store) and LinkExchange that details his life as an entrepreneur. It is divided into three sections: Profits; Profits and Passion; Profits, Passion and Purpose with indepth accounts of his various entrepreneurial adventures up to the sale of Zappos to Amazon. The two things that you can learn from Hsieh’s story about building an exciting company culture are:

Keep your employees fulfilled. If you get the culture right, success will follow. Tony Hsieh focused on hiring “only the people who smiled” to make sure that the culture at Zappos was a happy one. He focused on making the employees the core asset and they made sure that this culture was a constant iteration. Their culture of happiness bled into their brand promise “Delivering Happiness”. Zappos focused on this culture of happiness not just with employees but also with their vendors.

Clearly define your values and missions. Any organisation that doesn’t have clearly defined values and missions is going to have a difficult time building their culture or giving their customers the experience they want to.

4. On Networking:

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Keith Perazzi and Tahl Raz

Doubleday Religious Publishing Group, 309 pages, Rs 399 on amazon.in, keithferrazzi.com

"[The book] really redefines the whole notion of ‘how to network’ in a more authentic way. It’s all about finding common ground with the people you meet serendipitously." says Maneesh Goyal, founder of Live in the Grey, an online community offering resources for blending personal and professional lives.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi and Raz lay out the specific steps—and inner mindset—they use to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on their contacts list, people they have helped and who have helped them. They try to take a humane approach to networking - a mutually beneficial one. They also outline advice given by world’s most connected individuals - from Bill Clinton to the Dalai Lama. The book is divided into four sections - the mind-set; the skill-set; turning connections into compatriots; trading up and giving back. The two things to essentially remember about networking from the book are:

Real networking is about making other people successful and not just about jamming cards in your rolodex. If you can easily do a favour for someone, do so and don’t look back. Don’t keep score because relationships are not finite things. If you do something to help someone they are more likely to value you and the more such relationships you have the more valuable you become. They also emphasise on keeping in touch with your contacts and following up, not just pinging when you need them.

Invisibility, they write, is deadlier than failure. Never eat alone at social events as a meal is a good way of getting to know people. Don’t schmooze. If you want to reach out to someone for a specific purpose, be genuine about it. Use social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to make meaningful connections, spark engagement, and curate a network of people who can help you with your interests and goals. Build connections in as many different areas as possible.

5. On Consumer Behaviour:

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

 Dan Ariely

Harper Collins, 304 pages, Rs. 365 on amazon.in, danariely.com

"Predictably Irrational is a far more revolutionary book than its unthreatening manner lets on. It's a concise summary of why today's social science increasingly treats the markets-know-best model as a fairy tale.” wrote David Berreby in a New York Times Review.

In this book Dan Ariely challenges his readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are–how we repeat them again and again–I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them." The two key ideas in this book are:

We live simultaneously in the world of social norms and the world of market norms. Social norms are the exchanges and requests we make as part of personal connections. Market norms are the currency-defined exchanges. Whoever started the movement to treat customers socially had a great idea. The company gets several benefits. Loyalty is paramount. Minor infractions are accommodated. Relationships of course have ups and downs, but overall they're a pretty good thing.

Although companies have poured billions of dollars into marketing and advertising to create an impression of social relationships–they don't seem to understand the nature of the social relationship and its risks. For example, what happens when a customer's check bounces? If the relationship is based on market norms, the bank charges a fee and the customer shakes it off. Business is business. In a social relationship, however, a hefty late fee–rather than a friendly call from the manager or an automatic fee waiver–is not only a relationship-killer; it's a stab in the back. Consumers will take personal offense. After all, this was a relationship framed as a social exchange.

People not only compare things, but also compare things that are easily comparable. For example, if given the following options for a honeymoon - Paris (with free breakfast), Rome (with free breakfast), and Rome (no breakfast included), most people would probably choose Rome with the free breakfast. The rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Rome than it is to compare Paris and Rome. Ariely also explains the role of the decoy effect in the decision process as the phenomenon whereby consumers tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated. In the example with the honeymoon options, Rome without free breakfast is the decoy. It makes Paris look inferior when compared to Rome with the free breakfast. Relativity helps people make decisions but it can also make them miserable. People compare their lives to those of others, leading to jealousy and envy.

Ariely finishes by saying "the more we have, the more we want" and his suggested cure is to break the cycle of relativity. To break the cycle, people can control what goes on around them. The focus on smaller "circles" can boost relative happiness, as can changing this focus from narrow to broad.

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