Top 7 Books to get new ideas for your Covid-19 Business Recovery Plan

No crisis is planned. Like Covid-19, it always takes us by surprise. It’s an emotional time, where making ‘rational’ decisions can be difficult; there’s so much uncertainty to deal with and it can be overwhelming to know where to start. 

That’s why creating an adequate crisis recovery plan can help companies big or small, and their management teams, make a whole lot of strategic decisions to guide them through this difficult time. For that, you need a good balance of rational and creative thinking. But it’s easy to get stuck in a thought process feedback loop: how do you fuel your recovery plan with new ideas? Easy. Do some learning. 

Taking learning new concepts seriously, especially during a crisis, can help you adapt to a rapidly changing world and reflect those changes in your marketing/business strategy before you fade away. Consuming new perspectives and others’ experiences will actually broaden your strategy toolkit, providing you with more space to maneuver (which is always a nice thing during a crisis). 

Understanding the need to learn something new, our CEO Iurii Znak recently completed a course called ‘Ruthless Management’.  We interviewed him and collected his Top 7 Must-Read list of the most influential books to consume during the crisis.  

What led you to make the decision to enrol in this course?

“I felt like I was stuck in routine, living in the same information bubble. [I felt] that’s [the reason] why I couldn’t initiate significant changes to my business, being unable take it to the next level. I chose this particular course, as it was quick enough to match my rapid lifestyle, and informative enough to give an overview of my blind spots so that I can focus on them.” - Iurii Znak, Founder of Respect.Studio

What is your biggest take away from this course?

“Even when the business is working "fine" for you, there are still dozens of important things that you might be missing. It's important not to ignore them, but constantly seek them and fix, improve, develop. Otherwise, you risk one of those things growing so big, it will be both impossible to ignore it and...handle it.” - Iurii Znak, Founder of Respect.Studio

These are Iurii’s must-read books for every entrepreneur who’s willing not only to survive now but to develop an adaptive mindset. 

1.“No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits: No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Really Getting Rich” by Dan S. Kennedy. 

A read that will stand a lot of conventional business advice on its head. Most business theorists and entrepreneurs preach creating trust amongst your team to increase accountability and performance. Kennedy believes that expecting accountability is futile: employees must be heavily managed and monitored if you want to get results. As he puts it: “you must inspect what you expect”- every business should use some sort of mystery shopping to find out what customers experience. Sometimes, you have to be the ‘bad cop’. 

2. “Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization” by Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright

In this read, Logan holds that culture is the most important determinant of a business’s success. Every company consists of tribes, which are the most basic social units in which humans evolved to function. The quality of connections between members and each individual can influence how well or how badly a group functions. In essence, to change a group, you must influence and change the individual first. 

“Tribal Leadership gives amazingly insightful perspective on how people interact and succeed. I learned about myself and learned lessons I will carry with me and reflect on for the rest of my life.”

—John W. Fanning, Founding Chairman & CEO at Napster Inc.

3. “It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need” by Bruce Tulgan

A great read to help managers shape up their management style and focus on delivering tangible results. It challenges you as a business owner to spell out expectations, tell employees exactly what to do and how to do it, monitor and measure performance constantly. I believe that this book can be a great tool to transition to a more ‘hands-on’ management approach to lead any type of team.

4. “Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies” by Geoffrey B. West

A fascinating study that reveals universal scaling laws that can be seen in all living organisms, as well as in the life & growth of cities, economies, and organizations (companies). Brilliant, yet very accessible & understandable, analysis from the microscopic to the macro, seen through the prism of physics & biology & economics.

5.  “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach” by Martin Reeves, Knut Haanaes, Janmejaya Sinha.

When it comes to strategy, one size doesn’t fit all. This read guides companies to tailor their strategies to their specific business environments, whether you’re trying to grow in a mature industry or require nimble innovation in a turbulent environment, this book provides frameworks for you to evaluate which is the best strategy for your business right now.

6. “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters.

This book reads like a worksheet to help you develop your idea; it’s not a recipe for starting a small business but talks about the approach to start “small” and then dominate the micro-market. It provides an inside look at Peter Theil’s philosophy and strategy for making your startup succeed by looking at the lessons learned from founding and selling PayPal, investing in Facebook, and becoming a billionaire in the process. It’s even useful even if you’re not a startup, just a ton of knowledge and experience in an easy to read book. 

7.  “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business” by Douglas W. Hubbard.

This read claims there's no intangibles you can’t measure. Hubbard claims that the definition of measurement is the reduction of uncertainty. This means that measuring is not about finding the answer, but to reduce the uncertainty of what the answer is. He provides techniques on answering whether you should measure something and how to go about measuring them.

This is a powerful list of books that can help inject new ideas into your current thought process on ways to plan your recovery and how to #LeadAwayFromCovid

To learn more about building your post crisis recovery plan, check out Part 1 of our 3-Part Series on post-crisis recovery here: “Everything you need to know to help your business recover from Covid-19”

At Respect.Studio, we believe that being agile and data-based can exist together to help make decisions confidently, adapting to the dynamics of a fast-paced online world. As digital natives, we’re nerdy about learning and knowledge. We collect it, analyze it and put it to work to hack both digital and human networks that help create powerful brands for powerful professionals to have lasting impact on business.