I am often asked for tips on good books to read. Recently I have posted an article in Russian listing my favourite business books, which got over 70 thousand views. I hope that the English-speaking folks will also find it useful.
1. Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
To my great embarrassment, I only read this book at the beginning of 2013, although it was published in 2010. Filled with its very special “chemistry” and energy, the book describes a journey of an Entrepreneur from its very beginning. Basically, the book is about corporate culture and values that unite employees. It illustrates that meeting not only functional needs but also intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic needs of customers is more important than the chase for money. The money comes as the result of this approach. There is one point of the story that really grabbed me. During the first several years the company – and, consequently, the fund that invested into it – was bearing losses struggling to build up successful business processes. In order to cut the expenses, Hsieh suggested that they should move to Las Vegas, which was more cost-effective in terms of office space rent, salary rates, and so on. He hoped for about 30 of the 90 employees to agree to that, however 70 volunteered to go.
In June of 2013 my team and I visited Tony Hsieh at his Zappos headquarters.
In 2013, Zappos began transitioning to “Holacracy,” an alternative management system that replaces a pyramidal hierarchy with a network of circles dedicated to specific functions like marketing or HR, and ditches traditional management. Job titles are replaced with “roles” that employees can accumulate. This past March, CEO Tony Hsieh decided the transition was moving too slowly and offered employees a severance package to leave the company if they didn’t agree with its direction. By May, 210 of the roughly 1,500 employees (14%) took the deal, and the Amazon-owned online retailer was all in with “Holacracy”.
2. Blake Mycoskie – Start Something That Matters
In my opinion, Tony Hsieh and Blake Mycoskie have much more in common than simply shoes. I love TOMS shoes – they are nice and comfortable, simple and cheap. But most importantly, they are produced by a company, which is more about making an ethical choice rather than just making profit. TOMS offers shoes for casual wear following its “One for One” business model – you but one pair for yourself and another pair of shoes goes to those in need in poor African countries. In America you will meet somebody wearing TOMS shoes every three minutes, and I bet you’ll like him and relate to him. „Start something that matters” tells the story of TOMS, as well as around ten other companies which have inspired Blake (like Tony Hsieh’s Zappos). Interestingly, TOMS and other similar companies are now called story-doing companies as opposed to the story-telling ones. By the way, TOMS already has its followers: the fintech-startup CommonBond focusing on student loans, as well as the BOGO company with its one-for-one housing model.
The autobiography of the Virgin empire founder and owner has remained a bestseller for many years, and it is still up-to-date. It’s just as fascinating a read as, say, a British novel about some rebellious teenager growing up. He started his entrepreneur journey at school issuing a local youth culture magazine, which later became famous on a national scale, with all the rock stars of the time appearing in it. I did not know that he was dyslexic and had trouble remembering facts and information not experienced by him personally. He made lots of mistakes, however his parents never blamed him for it – they were always there to recognize his achievements. Even at his lowest moments his mother told him: “Let’s not discuss what happened – sure you’ve drawn the right conclusions out of it. Let’s just concentrate on how we make it right again.” To me his Virgin Records was always associated only with the Sex Pistols, but it turned out they worked with more than a half of the rock stars of the time. The most stunning about Branson’s book is the honesty of his story, the authentic and genuine way he talks about his mistakes and lessons learned. The vibrant feeling of passion for entrepreneurship just flows into the reader’s mind with every page. I had the chance to meet Branson personally in October of 2012 during our fintech-conference “Money of the Future”.
4. Howard Schultz – Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
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