Business Management Library

We get a lot of requests from members asking “What are the must-read books and manuals for golf instructors?” This installment includes general business and management books that Proponent Group members have recommended. These 14 books were most often mentioned and focus on starting, growing, and managing a successful business.

BUILT TO LAST by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

“This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies.” So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build companies that stand the test of time. Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: CREATING AND SUSTAINING SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE by Michael E. Porter

Competitive Advantage takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company’s relative cost position. Porter’s value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. Competitive Advantage also provides for the first time the tools to strategically segment an industry and rigorously assess the competitive logic of diversification.

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY TECHNIQUES FOR ANALYZING INDUSTRIES AND COMPETITORS by Michael Porter

Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into 19 languages, Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity–like all great breakthroughs–Porter’s analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter’s rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE by David Goleman

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart. The best news is that “emotional literacy” is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.

ENTRELEADERSHIP: TWENTY YEARS OF PRACTICAL BUSINESS WISDOM FROM THE TRENCHES by Dave Ramsey

Your team will never grow beyond you, so here’s another question to consider. Are you growing? Whether you’re sitting at the CEO’s desk, the middle manager’s cubicle, or a card table in your living-room-based startup, EntreLeadership provides the practical, step-by-step guidance to grow your business where you want it to go. Dave opens up his championship playbook for business to show you how to: Inspire your team to take ownership and love what they do; Unify your team and get rid of all gossip; Handle money to set your business up for success; Reach every goal you set and much more.

THE E-MYTH REVISITED: WHY MOST SMALL BUSINESSES DON’T WORK AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT by Michael Gerber

In this first new and totally revised edition of the bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed. He then shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business whether or not it is a franchise. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.

GOOD TO GREAT: WHY SOME COMPANIES TAKE THE LEAP…..AND OTHERS DON’T by Jim Collins

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Using tough benchmarks, Collins identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least 15 years. The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice.

HUG YOUR CUSTOMERS: THE PROVEN WAY TO PERSONALIZE SALES AND ACHIEVE ASTOUNDING RESULTS by Jack Mitchell

A master of customer service reveals his secrets for developing long-lasting business relationships and customer loyalty. “We shower our customers with attention,” says Mitchell “There’s no doubt in my mind that our philosophy can be applied to selling just about anything — from aircraft engines to beanbags.” The only way to stay in business is with customers, and Jack Mitchell knows how to attract them, and how to keep them. He has a deceptively simple but winning relationship approach to customer service — that a relationship is at the heart of every transaction. Jack’s business philosophy is based on “hugs” – personal touches that impress and satisfy the customer.

IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE: LESSONS FROM AMERICA’S BEST RUN COMPANIES by Tom Peters

In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table. Based on a study of 43 of America’s best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management – action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices – that made these organizations successful.

THE ONE MINUTE MANAGER by Ken Blanchard

For more than 20 years, millions of managers in Fortune 500 companies and small businesses nationwide have followed The One Minute Manager’s techniques, thus increasing their productivity, job satisfaction and personal prosperity. These very real results were achieved through learning the management techniques that spell profitability for the organization and its employees. The One Minute Manager reveals three practical secrets: One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands. The book also presents several studies in medicine and the behavioral sciences that explain why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people. By the end you will know how to apply them to your own situation and enjoy the benefits.

THE PURPLE COW: TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS BY BEING REMARKABLE by Seth Godin

Seth Godin asked a simple question that turned the business world upside down: What do Starbucks, JetBlue, Apple, Dutch Boy, and Hard Candy have that other companies don’t? How did they confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind formerly tried-and-true brands? Answer: They were purple cows. Godin defines a Purple Cow as anything phenomenal, counterintuitive, exciting…remarkable. Every day, consumers ignore a lot of brown cows, but you can bet they won’t ignore a purple cow. You can’t paint your product or service purple after the fact. You have to be inherently purple or no one will talk about you. Godin urges you to emulate companies that are consistently remarkable, which drives explosive word of mouth.

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Stephen Covey

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service and human dignity–principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

SMALL GIANTS: COMPANIES THAT CHOOSE TO BE GREAT INSTEAD OF BIG by Bo Burlingham

It’s an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do…creating a great place to work…providing great customer service and making great contributions to their communities. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer.

THE TIPPING POINT: HOW LITTLE THINGS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE by Malcolm Gladwell

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.