8 powerful ideas from my favourite famous business books

1. Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Great leaders take ultimate responsibility for their team’s success or failure, so there are no bad teams — only bad leaders.

2. So Good They Can’t Ignore You — Cal Newport

A fulfilling career is less about finding your calling or following your passion and more about honing your craft into a highly valuable skillset over a long period of time.

3. Give and take — Adam Grant

Generosity trumps selfishness in the long run. Research shows that it’s not just hard work, passion, grit and luck that determines your success: your reciprocity style, your willingness to be kind, generous and thoughtful, has a big impact on your success.

4. The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel

Accumulating wealth is more about psychology, about understanding our biases, tendencies and blindspots, than about intelligence, finance or economics.

5. Radical Candor — Kim Scott

If you’re too afraid to cahllenge people directly, you risk falling into ruinous empathy, like the guy who has to amputate his dog’s tail, but love sthe dog so much he cuts it off an inch each day.

6. Mindset — Carol Dweck

Our intelligence, character, morality and grit are not fixed qualities, but traits that can be developed over time — but only if you adopt a growth mindset which says these things can be changed, with consistent effort and dilligent practice.

7. Laziness Does Not Exist — Devon Price

Laziness, including procrastination, is not a sign of moral ineptitude or self-limitation, but instead a signal that something is wrong, and can only be fixed when the underlying cause is identified and addressed.

8. Big Potential — Shawn Achor

You can be a superstar, but you can’t do it on your own — you need to surround yourself with positive influences who provide positive peer pressure.