Even the world’s most successful CEOs need a little bit of inspiration sometimes. Below, five of the world’s top CEOs explain which business books have helped them rise to the top. If it’s worked for them, why not you? How many have you read?
1. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
- Recommended by: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.
- Authors: Jim Collins and Jerry Portas.
“Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.” ~ Quote taken from Built to Last.
2. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
- Recommended by: Kim Taylor, CEO of Ranku.
- Author: Marie Kondo
“It’s a psychology book cleverly designed as a book about organising your home. Marie Kondo teaches you to have respect and empathy for all the physical things in your life in order to help declutter your mind. It’s inspired our product development process that building great software is about removing things that aren’t useful instead of trying to add new features.” ~ Kim Taylor.
3. The Battle for Your Mind
- Recommend by: Victor Chang, CEO of Furbo.
- Author: Al Ries
“This is an absolute classic that opened up my mind about consumer psychology. It taught me that a product cannot be everything to everyone. In an age where we have so many options and our attention span is so short, it’s almost impossible to get a message to stand out. The key is to focus, I mean REALLY focus on finding the one word that can define my brand and stick in the consumer’s mind. After all these years, when I think of Disney, I still think of the word ‘magical’ and that brand has become timeless for me. It inspires me to go out there and talk to more customers to discover what my brand essence is.” ~ Victor Chang.
4. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
- Recommended by: Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square.
- Author: Atul Gawande
“Good checklists… are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations.” ~ Jack Dorsey.
5. Think and Grow Rich
- Recommended by: Asher Hunt, CEO of Overnight.
- Author: Napoleon Hill
“It’s a book that genuinely changed my life. My uncle told me to read this book when I was 17 years old because it changed his life. It taught him to think beyond constraints of everyday living and look at everything as attainable. Everything around you was built by normal people. He slept in a drawer in a back-country North Carolina home when he was three, and now he lives in a 21,000-square-foot house in Los Angeles. He is completely blind.” ~ Asher Hunt.
Inspire success
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