The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is the person who leads and fights for the company. However, being a successful CEO cannot be achieved in one day. In order to be one of them, you have to possess certain abilities, such as being a good leader and communicator, being a good strategist; also being persuasive and a good seller. The CEO also must know how to build and motivate a team. These characteristics are not always innate, and, even if they are, we need to strength them.
Therefore, if you are the manager of a company, here you have a list of seven recommended books and documents that all CEO must read:
1. The Art of War (Sun Tzu, 513 B.C.). This is one of the most ancient books talking about war-strategies. Precisely for this reason, it is also one of the most used guides in other areas, especially when talking about business, because strategists must know how to solve problems and achieve goals.
2. The monk who sold his Ferrari (Robin Sharma, 1999). This book tells us through a fable about knowledge and self-growth. The main story is about a lawyer who decides to change his life and goes to Himalaya, where he lives among the monks and learns valuable lessons. When he returns back, he starts helping a friend with a business applying the 8 lessons he learned there.
3. The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle, 1997). This is a book about personal-reflexion, which teaches us that we find limitations only because we do not think we are able to achieve our goals. It is an excellent reading for spiritual-growth and for interiorizing the so-called “I can”.
4. La gran manzana: 10 claves del éxito de Apple (Leandro Zanoni, 2012). As you might know, Apple is one of the largest companies that have achieved staunchest supporters. The author explains which are the keys for Apple’s success, so it is an excellent reference about a leadership.
5. Passion for Entrepreneurship. From idea to crude reality (Andy Freire, 2005). This is a very useful reading because it explains a real experience in a practical way, so it will very easy to understand and to know what to do at each stage in order to run a business.
6. The CEO (Owen Burke y Duff Mcdonald, 2005). This is a practical reading about leadership: in order to keep going forward, you have to choose one of the possible options that show up on each stage, as it happens in real life. Thus, the book becomes a guide that teaches the reader strategies applied to their own business decisions.
7. Adapt (Tim Harford, 2011). This reading is very interesting because it is about businessmen learning how to accept failures and crisis. It also teaches us how to get prepared in those moments.
As you can see, with this selection you may learn and start enforcing the features any CEO must have in order to be a good leader. You may also discover resources and strategies you will need in order to have a successful business.
“Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man”. Ralph Waldo Emerson