Summer Reading List - Best Business Books Ever!

The Importance of Keeping Reading.?

It’s summertime and a lot of us have got some time off will be out. I’m working through most of the summer just taking some long weekend cause it’s kind of busy here at diamond HQ. But with the offices quiet we decided to get all our office spaces, spic and span ready for the onslaught of training and peak and so we’ve consolidated our library. ?

I didn’t go to university so I’m very much the self-taught entrepreneur and I’ve read a lot of books to guide me on my journey, particularly as we started scaling the business about 10 years ago. I did take myself back to school and did the Cranfield Business Growth Program that I thoroughly recommend, albeit this comes with a warning. I walked out of there in 2018, thinking we have MUCH to do in order to grow our business to the scale that we want it to, so be warned! ?

Here’s?my key reading list for the summer of the dozen or so books that I believe have helped most on my business journey:?

I’d say the seminal book in terms of changing my business perspective was ‘Blackbox Thinking’ by Matthew Syed. Entirely changed our culture here at diamond and my leadership style. It’s basically about examining the errors you make in a no blame culture and altering process in order to change and, by constantly evolving rather than bollocking, that’s how your performance becomes better and better. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The second book is ‘Bounce’ by the same author, which talks about not only the amount of hours one has to put in in order to be really good at their profession, but the importance of getting the right education and coaching in order to make sure that you’re not practising your art incorrectly. ?

The third book, would have to be Diana Nyad’s ‘Find a Way’. This is a hugely inspiring tale of a mega athlete who decided to swim straight from Cuba to Key West attempting at first in her 20s and finally achieving her in her 60s. It is beyond inspirational. And Diana has couple of TEDTalks that are well worth listening to by means of introduction.?

I think the next series of books that I recommend are the ‘Chimp Paradox’ and ‘The Silent Guides’ by Professor Sir Steve Peters.I had a brain that, quite frankly, confused me in some of its behavioural output and understanding the mechanism of that brain, its?conditioning and my ability to reprogram it was essential in my evolution. ?

Then there’s the nitty-gritty books in terms of the business. The inspiration for e-commerce The inspiration for e-commerce fulfilment centre came to me from Time Ferris’s Four Hour Working Week’. When I read that in 2010, I wasn’t thinking about working four hours a week. I was thinking that people who wanted to work four hours a week would want to outsource the logistics. And from that our new business grew.?

Two of the books that helped me put the processes in place in order to do that work. ‘Get a Grip’ and ‘Traction’ led by Wickham?and sustaining creating momentum in your business.?

‘Will it make the boat go faster’ by Ben Hunt Davies was another seminal book in terms of our team and how we had to recruit them train them and manage them so that we could reach our version of the Olympic gold. Incredible reading.?

Another essential culture book for me was ‘Be More Pirate’ by Sam Coniff - rule breaking, culture establishing, taking on the establishment and wining – its all there.?

Scaling up by Verne Harnish?has also been imperative in terms of making sure we’ve got the right mechanisms in place to scale. And then ‘The Platform Revolution’ really talked to me about the importance of technology and how we had to harness that in order to symbiotically recruit not only network partners but new Clients via Despatchlab, which was the technology we had created. ?

There’s a couple of books about personal development and the mind, which I think are really interesting. ‘The Art of Thinking Clearly’ by Ralph Dobelli and ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain are very different but certainly bettered my understanding of myself and will certainly empower you to have a think about your own thought processes, authenticity as a person and leader.?

?There’s one that was gripping in terms of how we could market our services and he’s a great listen if you can catch him on one of his many talks is Rory Sutherlands ‘Alchemy’.?

Then there’s the book ‘Achieve the Impossible’ by Professor Greg Whyte. This is a book that is full of so many analogies about achieving your goals. I have shamelessly reused them in many a team peptalk, for which I give Professor Whyte for the inspiration. ?

And then I can’t finish my summer reading list without the man and his book that I hold responsible for my entire entrepreneurial journey, which is John Harvey Jones and his book ‘All Together Now’ which I read when I was 15. I remember watching his program on TV when he was rescuing Lotus when I first landed in this country in 1987, and this was the book that inspired me to be an entrepreneur.?

I now need to take a week off to re-read all of these I think. The brain is a fickle thing and it needs an occasional reminder and all of those above are very worthy of my re-read this August.

Happy summer!