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Starting a career in business management can feel like entering a foreign world. But even if you’re just thinking of getting a business degree or stepping into a managerial role for the first time, you don’t have to feel lost. These best business management books will help refine your strategic management skills, and provide a clear roadmap to success.

In this post, we’ll share recommended books that will equip you with the best management tools applicable for real-life business scenarios. These essential readings contain insightful stories and fables based on real companies as well as fundamental frameworks for management.

Before we look at our picks for best business books, let’s understand the essential areas every new manager needs to learn to navigate.

Functional Areas of Business

According to research from CEB Global, 60% of new managers fail in their first 24 months as they get overwhelmed and stressed. One surefire way to help you rise above this majority is to be well-equipped and prepared by learning core functions of a business.

Good strategic management involves handling a wide range of interconnected areas that ensure a company’s success. Mastering these areas will help you perform better than the majority of new managers, driving growth, efficiency, and profitability.

Here are the five core functional areas to focus on:

The 5 key functional areas of business that any good manager should know: finance, HR management, marketing, product development, business development

Finance

An effective manager tracks cash flow closely and understands how to use financial resources to their advantage. You’ll need financial intelligence to understand reports and set key metrics for profit and success.

Marketing

You should be able to understand your target market’s needs and wants to position your brand in the right place. Being able to keep up with marketing and consumer trends is critical for a competitive edge.

Product Development

Management invites managers to be flexible, adaptable, and open to new ideas. Coming up with innovative and valuable solutions is the only way to have a competitive advantage in a dynamic business environment.

Business Development and Strategy

Managers need to look far ahead with long-term goals and strategies for business growth, not just the day-to-day operations. This strategic leadership requires balancing short-term sustainability while exploring long-term opportunities.

Human Resource Management

Great managers foster a positive company culture by engaging and motivating their teams. Investing in emotional intelligence can go a long way to understanding your team members, empowering them, and enhancing productivity.

Best Business Management Books for New and Aspiring Managers

Here are our curated choices for essential readings for new and aspiring managers.

Which are the best business management books to read? 7 Top Picks for new and aspiring managers

The New One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson

1-Sentence Summary:

Blanchard and Johnson’s book teaches simple one-minute techniques that empower teams and get better results in less time.

What It Teaches You:

This book teaches how to refine your leadership approach with 3 quick techniques that will make a lasting impact on you as a manager. These techniques will help build positive management habits aligned towards productivity and engagement.

Key Takeaways:

The New One Minute Manager teaches us to hire people with potential and be an effective coach to turn them into star players. This leadership style uses 3 methods: One-Minute Goals, One-Minute Praising, and One-Minute Reprimands. The book also features 1-page goal setting and swift feedback loops with team members. This makes the methods in this book easy to implement for already existing teams.

Best For:

New managers who need a quick, actionable framework for managing teams effectively and efficiently.

Favorite Quote:

“Your job is to show people how to manage themselves and enjoy it. You want them to succeed when you’re not around.”

Book Review:

Framed around a fascinating story, this quick read offers engaging yet straightforward advice for managers to start setting clear goals and improving team communication. Its simplicity makes it highly practical for anyone just starting out in management.

You can read the free The New One Minute Manager summary here.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

1-Sentence Summary:

This book reveals how great managers succeed despite breaking every conventional business rule.

What It Teaches You:

Buckingham and Coffman attempt to answer how the world’s best managers get great results and find talented employees. In their research through the Gallup Organization, they highlight that great managers stick to 4 core activities that go against conventional wisdom. This book crystallizes the core of strategic leadership through the combined experience of the greatest in the industry.

Key Takeaway:

How great managers treat their employees differently gives them and their company a competitive advantage over the rest. Through rigorous research, it is found that they bring out their team’s strengths by breaking these rules. Instead, they focus on each team member’s strengths (instead of weaknesses) and how they can best fit in their teams.

Favorite Quote:

“People leave managers, not companies.”

Best For:

Managers who want to expand their leadership skills beyond conventional wisdom to bring out the best in their employees.

Book Review:

This practical and research-backed book offers insights that challenge traditional management practices. It’s filled with compelling stories and iconic company case studies backed by research, making it an invaluable resource for both business students and managers.

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

1-Sentence Summary:

A self-guided MBA that covers a wide range of core business principles—without the need for a formal degree.

What It Teaches You:

In The Personal MBA, Kaufman provides readers with a clear understanding of key business areas, like value creation, marketing, sales, and financial management. It is also a groundbreaking guide to start the journey of mastering people and systems management, turning you into an effective business leader.

Key Takeaways:

A formal MBA program can set you back hundreds of dollars, and yet is often outdated and doesn’t directly result in career success. Instead of getting a degree, it’s easier to self-educate on 5 essential parts of the business. The book covers a broad range of topics in a way that’s accessible and actionable for anyone seeking to run a successful business.

Best For:

Aspiring managers and entrepreneurs who want to master business concepts without enrolling in an expensive MBA program.

Favorite Quote:

“Skip business school. Educate yourself.”

Book Review:

Kaufman’s book is essential reading material for anyone who wants to be a business leader. This book equips you with practical business knowledge, including core business models fit for various industries.

Learn more with our free The Personal MBA summary here.

Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

1-Sentence Summary:

Lencioni provides a field guide to overcoming common team obstacles like lack of trust, conflict avoidance, and accountability.

What It Teaches You:

This book offers tools for adopting a leadership style that overcomes common team dysfunctions. It covers 5 layers of team success that a new manager needs to stack towards getting results.

Key Takeaways:

When done right, teamwork can become a competitive advantage that brings seemingly impossible results. This is why it’s crucial to turn 5 key dysfunctions of a team into factors for team success. It also contains practical tips for managing emotional responses during conflicts and engaging teams through genuine motivation.

Best For:

Managers learning to troubleshoot teams struggling with communication, trust, or performance issues.

Favorite Quote:

Teamwork doesn’t require great intellectual insights or masterful tactics. More than anything else, it comes down to courage and persistence.

Book Review:

Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is an essential business book for team leaders and managers. It is a concise and easy-to-read book, focusing on actionable advice, tools, and exercises for real-world scenarios.

Find out more with our free summary of Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team here.

It’s the Manager: Moving from Boss to Coach by Jim Clifton & Jim Harter

1-Sentence Summary:

This book emphasizes the shift from traditional management skills to a coaching mindset.

What It Teaches You:

It’s the Manager teaches us that moving beyond the “boss” mentality is how to get the most out of people’s potential. This book highlights the value of employee engagement and strengths-based management as valuable strategic management skills.

Key Takeaways:

Engaged employees create engaged customers which in turn create successful companies. Being an effective leader means understanding how to create and nurture these engaged employees. This book provides a practical guide for creating this culture of people development to help you achieve consistent peak performance.

Best For:

Managers who want to make the most out of their team’s talents and skills.

Favorite Quote:

“Maximizing human potential not only has a positive impact on your company but on your nation’s and the world’s productivity too.”

Book Review:

This book challenges the idea of what strategic management is really about. It provides easy-to-follow concepts for building a strength-based culture with any team. Overall, it’s an insightful read for any leader, manager, executive, or human resource (HR) professional.

Check out our free It’s the Manager summary here.

Management Challenges for the 21st Century by Peter F. Drucker

1-Sentence Summary:

Peter Drucker’s work explores the evolving role of managers in a globalized and information-driven economy.

What It Teaches You:

This book teaches managers how to navigate the challenges of strategic leadership in the 21st century, managing knowledge workers, decentralization, and innovation.

Key Takeaways:

The book explores 6 fundamental challenges managers are facing in the 21st century. These challenges arise from major social, economic, and political changes. In this Peter Drucker book, managers learn to shift their strategic approach in a dynamic business environment.

Best For:

Managers seeking to be adaptable and flexible in a fast-changing global business environment.

Favorite Quote:

“Management involves everything that affects the organization’s results.”

Book Review:

Peter Drucker’s insights on modern management become an essential reading for facing a more dynamic world. It is one of the clearest guides you can get for understanding modern organizational theory even beyond businesses.

Learn more from our free Management Challenges for the 21st Century summary here.

The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert Kaplan & David Norton

1-Sentence Summary:

The Balanced Scorecard is a definitive guide to aligning daily operations with long-term business goals.

What It Teaches You:

The book introduces the Balanced Scorecard, a tool that tracks performance across 4 high-level perspectives for managers. It is a practical guide for how to use this tool for tracking your results and what initiatives are currently driving those results.

Key Takeaways:

The Balanced Scorecard can help you measure organizational performance from four perspectives: Financials, Customers, Internal Business Processes, and Learning & Growth. These perspectives help align your core vision with day-to-day operations management. The book also helps guide a proper implementation including communication and feedback loop for the entire team.

Best For:

Managers seeking tools to link day-to-day performance with long-term business strategies.

Favorite Quote:

“What you measure is what you get.”

Book Review:

The book simplifies performance management for any industry. It also uses real companies as concrete examples of how the tool can be adopted by a wide range of companies, no matter their business models.

Find out more with our free summary of The Balanced Scorecard here.

Bonus Books for Deepening Management Knowledge

If you are still looking for more books to add to your reading list, here are a few of our runner-ups:

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

Good to Great explores the principles of strategic leadership that turn companies from Good to Great over time. Collins highlights concepts like the Hedgehog Concept and the importance of disciplined action to create radically successful businesses. It’s a must-read for anyone aspiring to lead an organization and build a legacy through exceptional long-term performance.

Dive deeper with our free Good to Great book summary here.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

The E-Myth Revisited debunks the myth that true blue entrepreneurs are the only ones who can build and manage businesses. Gerber shares a practical guide for the added roles someone must adopt to fully meet business needs. This book is great for entrepreneurs and small business owners who are struggling to fit into a managerial role and wishes to establish long-term strategies.

Learn more with our free The E-Myth Revisited book summary here.

Conclusion

Good management requires many skills including widespread mastery of WHAT you’ll manage. However, it’s also important to develop emotional intelligence and people skills to empower the WHO you manage.

With this essential reading list, you will be equipped with the best books for making strategic decisions for your organization, no matter what the industry or business model. You’ll be able to apply great management techniques in no time and drive your career success.

Want to deep-dive further into more books on business strategy and finance? Our library contains more great works from Peter Senge, John P. Kotter, Simon Sinek, and John C. Maxwell.

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