Best books that I read in 2018

I have always enjoyed reading books; it helps me relax after a busy day at work. Reading a few pages during my train journey or those long flights makes me dive into a completely different world. This year I made a deliberate attempt to read books that I call "Handbooks" – books that can be described as "start anywhere; keep reading" type, carry the basics that I can refer to from time to time. With these books, I can learn something new every time I revisit them and most importantly, the lessons and techniques can help me in my personal life and professional work. I read about 30 books this year and here is a list of five books that I'd recommend you to read:

1. The Excellence Dividend by Tom Peters:

I got convinced about reading this book after I read the review here. The book by the legendary Tom Peters is written mostly in a PowerPoint format. With its different font size and type, I would call this as a no-nonsense book that has Tom's ideas, thoughts and perspectives from his years of management experiences.

The book urges, nudges and at times screams at you as it shares his pearls of management wisdom. Here are some of his pearls of wisdom:

• Listening is a strategy.
• On Management: Hard is soft. Soft is hard. "Hard" (the plans, numbers and org charts) is "soft". "Soft" (people, relationship, culture) is "hard".
• On Innovation: Whoever tries the most stuff and screws up the most stuff, wins fastest. It's a numbers game. 
• On Excellence: There is no tomorrow in excellence; there is only right now. Excellence is the next five minutes.

2. Build an A-Team by Whitney Johnson:

Today, many of us work in a service organization and we are quick to realize that the most important asset that we have is our team. We all intend to be great team builders but when we get down to work and respond to the tight deadlines and to customer demands, we forget to take care and grow our most important asset.

This book is a great guide on how to build a team that is smart, hungry and humble. It carries a diagnostic tool to help you conduct a self-assessment of you and your team. The "S Curve" mentioned in the book is a good technique to build the fabric of your team – here's more about it: 

You build an A-team, one that can actually innovate and manage through change, by having at any given time 70% of your people in that steep part of the curve, 15% of your people at the low end of the curve, where they ask questions like "Why do we do it like this?" Those questions open up the doors to innovation. And you should have 15% of your people at the high end, with mastery. You should not have too many people in the sweet spot and at the low end, where there are lots of questions and no one to answer them. 

3. Clients for Life by Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel:

What is common to Aristotle, Thomas More, Niccolò Machiavelli, and J.P. Morgan? They were all extraordinary advisors who achieved great client relationships.

Divided into ten chapters, this is a "must read" book for modern professionals and is all about improving client retention, client loyalty, and relationship management. There are solid examples from history and real-life case studies from the authors that make you look back at some of your past client engagements and relationships. It will make you think how you could have done better. The picture below lists the the ingredients of a breakthrough relationship for a successful advisor. If you are in Management Consulting, I would certainly recommend this book to you.

4. Smart Collaboration by Heidi K. Gardner:

Our clients today want to make sure that we evaluate a complex problem from different perspectives and bring the best of the firm to them. However, organizations today are structured differently and generally operate in silos.

When asked to collaborate and work with others, we realize that it’s not easy - it takes a lot of effort and time. Further, if the reporting structures are not clear, it becomes even more difficult to manage people and get them to work together. In the future and even today, organizations cannot rely on individual knowledge and talents. They need to tap into the collective wisdom of a cross-disciplinary team in the organization. With a background in business, law and consulting, the author Heidi K. Gardner makes the case on how we can collaborate more effectively and mentions the benefits of smarter collaboration: financial gains, customer retention, increased innovation, employee engagement, and decreased risk.

5. Strength Finder 2.0 by Gallup and Tom Rath:

I took the Strengths Finder assessment for the first time in 2006 as an MBA student and found the results fascinating! Now, I have grown and possibly changed. I took the test again this year and most of the results remained the same.

The Gallup Strength Finder is an interesting concept with the theory that you can foster your progress if you are aware of your characteristic strengths. It's based on the principle that instead of trying to fix whatever ails your behavior, you are expected to productively apply your highest five natural talents in order to better effectuate the tasks associated with your position. I got my team and a few of the clients this year to take this test and we have always enjoyed the discussion on how we can play to our strengths. My top 5 strengths are: Strategic, Ideation, Achieve, Activator, Relator. The best part is that more or less my strengths have remained the same since my MBA days. Take the test and give the book a read if you want to discover yourself. 

I am sure that there are more books out there. Hopefully, you liked my list of the Handbooks. If there are some in your list, let me know in the comments section. Wishing you the very best of 2019. Happy Reading.