The Founder Bookshelf
Books founders recommend to each other. Browse by topic or by where you are as you grow, mark what you've read, and add what's next.
21 books on Leadership & Management for timeless
-
What separates merely good companies from truly great ones.
Jim Collins and his research team studied companies that made a sustained leap from good to great results and compared them to peers that did not. They identify common...
1 founder recommend Get the book ↗
-
Handle high-stakes conversations without going silent or going to war.
The authors define crucial conversations as those where stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong. They offer a step-by-step method for staying in...
-
Brave leadership starts with the courage to be vulnerable.
Brown applies her research on vulnerability and courage to leadership, arguing that daring leaders lean into hard conversations rather than armor up. The book covers...
-
Bad meetings are not boring by accident, and they are fixable.
Through a business fable, Lencioni diagnoses why most meetings are tedious and ineffective and proposes a cure. He argues that meetings lack drama and contextual...
-
Break every hard talk into three conversations you can actually manage.
Drawing on the Harvard Negotiation Project, the authors argue that every difficult conversation is really three: the what-happened conversation, the feelings...
-
Great managers break conventional rules to grow people's strengths.
Based on Gallup's massive study of managers and employees, the authors find that great managers reject received wisdom and instead build on each person's natural...
-
Most leadership failures start with deceiving yourself.
Told as a business fable, the book describes how leaders fall into a self-justifying mindset, being in the box, that distorts how they see other people. It argues that...
-
How four central bankers steered the world into the Depression.
Lords of Finance tells the story of the four central bankers whose decisions in the years between the world wars helped trigger the Great Depression. Liaquat Ahamed...
-
Great leaders multiply the intelligence of their teams.
Based on research across more than 150 leaders, Wiseman distinguishes Multipliers, who amplify the intelligence and capability of those around them, from Diminishers,...
-
High talent density plus radical candor minus controls.
Hastings and Meyer reveal the unusual management philosophy behind Netflix, built on three moves: raise talent density, increase candor, then progressively remove...
-
Becoming a leader is an act of self-invention.
Bennis draws on interviews with prominent leaders to argue that leadership begins with knowing and fully expressing yourself. He explores how people become leaders,...
-
Spot the strategic inflection point before it destroys your business.
Andy Grove introduces the strategic inflection point, the moment when the fundamentals of a business shift and the old way of competing stops working. Drawing on...
-
Fix the system, not the people, to build lasting quality.
Deming lays out a theory of management built on his famous 14 Points, arguing that most failures stem from flawed systems rather than poor workers. He critiques...
-
Treat people like adults and build a high-performance culture.
Drawing on her years shaping Netflix's culture, Patty McCord rejects conventional HR practices in favor of treating employees as capable adults. She argues for radical...
-
A healthy organization beats a smart one every time.
In his first straight nonfiction book, Lencioni argues that organizational health, not just strategy or finance, is the single greatest competitive advantage. He lays...
-
Belonging, candor, and purpose are what make groups click.
Coyle goes inside high-performing groups, from Navy SEALs and IDEO to the San Antonio Spurs, to find what makes their cultures work. He distills culture down to three...
-
Every leadership strength becomes a weakness when overused.
The follow-up to Extreme Ownership focuses on the balancing act of leadership: knowing when to push and when to ease off. Willink and Babin examine opposing forces a...
-
Play for the long game, not just to win today.
Sinek applies game theory's distinction between finite and infinite games to business, arguing that the best leaders play the infinite game. Rather than chasing...
-
The habits that made you successful can hold you back.
Goldsmith identifies twenty interpersonal habits, like winning too much, adding too much value, and not listening, that keep already successful people from advancing...
-
Your culture is what your people do, not what you say.
Horowitz argues that culture is defined by how people actually behave, especially when leaders are not watching. He draws lessons from unlikely leaders including the...
-
Hire A players with a disciplined, repeatable method.
Smart and Street argue that hiring mistakes are the costliest problem in business and offer the A Method to fix them. The process centers on writing a scorecard,...
eChai Partner Brands
eChai Ventures partners with select brands as their growth partner. Together we explore new ideas, open doors, and build momentum across the startup ecosystem.
