The best business books of 2017 (so far)

Already this year there has been a glut of business books by esteemed authors, each of whom aim to give insights, guidance and advice to help improve you and your company’s performance. We take a look at some of the best that 2017 has yielded so far.

Reinvent Yourself
James Altucher
The bestselling author of Choose Yourself returns with a new book about how to reinvent yourself in a fast-changing world. Altucher uses his encounters with successful leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and mentors — as well as his own numerous reinventions — to compile Reinvent Yourself, which details the often intense, painful and exhilarating journey of transformation. Within its pages are specific techniques, stories and guidance that explain and show why Altucher believes it is critical for people to master the skills of reinvention. Highlighting that the process of reinvention never stops, the book covers issues such as mentorship, timelines, new careers, making choices, and the role that money plays.

The Road to Recognition
Seth Price and Barry Feldman
This A to Z guide to personal branding looks to help you capitalise on the strength of your name and boost your professional success in the digital media age. The book’s 26 ‘milestones’ aim to put you on the road to recognition as an expert in your field — whether you are an entrepreneur, business leader, aspiring professional, second careerist, or something else. Using the notion that you are the marketing director of your own brand, the book gives hints, tips, advice and guidance on how to succeed in the most important role of your life — yourself. From ‘authenticity’, ‘blog’ and ‘content’ to ‘examine’, ‘you do’ and ‘zeal’, these are easily digestible insights into personal branding.

Don’t they know it’s friday?
Jeremy Williams
Now in its third edition, this bestseller for almost 20 years is the quintessential guide to doing business in the Gulf region. Updated for the modern day, this is the perfect companion for expats working in the GCC, or visitors to the region. Full of advice on etiqette, cultural practices, business methods and behaviour patterns, the book also dispels many of the myths associated with Gulf countries. Aimed largely at newcomers to the region, there is also a lot of benefit to longer-term residents who can gain from the wealth of information and guidance within its pages.

Hacking Growth
Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
Subtitled ‘How today’s fastest-growing companies drive breakout success’, this book focuses on one of Silicon Valley’s key business methodologies — one that has helped the likes of Airbnb, LinkedIn, Facebook and Uber become the powerhouses they are today. ‘Growth hacking’ is now not only practiced by start-ups looking to disrupt, but also by companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and many more entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives across the world. Hacking Growth gives you the tools you need to work through the methodology and develop your own tailored strategy to potentially increase your customer base and market share.

One Mission
Chris Fussell, C. W. Goodyear and General Stanley McChrystal
This leadership guide follows on from Fussell and McChrystal’s bestseller Team of Teams, in which the authors advocated a new organisational model that combined the agility and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a big company. One Mission helps leaders across various industries to implement the Team of Team approach, which includes removing silos, improving collaboration, and avoiding turf wars. The name of the game here is unification — encouraging teams to commit to a single mission that will in turn develop an overall capability that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Real artists don’t starve
Jeff Goins
Offering ‘timeless strategies for thriving in the new creative age’, this book by popular author Goins seeks to dispel the myth that being creative is a hindrance to success. Instead he works to show that an artistic temperament is a competitive advantage, with successful creatives using this strength in a variety of ways. He provides a number of strategies for artists to excel, including ‘steal from your influences’ rather than wait for inspiration, ‘collaborate with others’, ‘take strategic risks’, ‘make money in order to make more art’, and ‘apprentice under a master’. Goins also gives some inspiring anecdotes that help illustrate the notion that business and art are not mutually exclusive pursuits.

Top of Mind
John Hall
This step-by-step guide aims to help businesses and their leaders achieve such high levels of trust and influence that they are at the forefront of people’s minds when they think about their particular industry. Hall also gives practical examples of how to use your content to keep your brand first in people’s thoughts — not just potential customers, but corporate decision makers too. In the book he discusses how the needs and expectations of customers have changed, and what this means to you; as well as explaining how to build a helpful, authentic and consistent brand, and exploring methods for using digital content to build genuine trust with your audience.

Self-employed: 50 Signs That You Might Be An Entrepreneur
Joel Comm and John Rampton
It’s often said that entrepreneurs make the business world go round — dreaming up new ideas and innovations, launching SMEs that fuel the economy, and providing vital employment across industries. But for some, the step into entrepreneurship can be an unsure one. This book by Comm and Rampton details 50 different qualities that suggest you are equipped for the entrepreneurial world, providing a framework to help you decide whether the self-employed lifestyle is for you. The authors are both experienced entrepreneurs themselves, and have extensive CVs that also cover mentorship, consultancy, blogging, authorship, and — of course — successful business ownership.

The Best Team Wins
Adam Robinson
Predictive hiring is at the heart of this book that explains how to reduce hiring risks and predict success. Robinson — a recruiting professional of more than 20 years — lays out his method for hiring new employees, teaching you how to rethink the process of finding, assessing and hiring the right people. Among the topics covered in the book are how to use a data-driven job profile to assess candidate risk, how to build a candidate scorecard, how to ask the right questions in interview, and how to craft an offer the candidate can’t refuse. Robinson’s techniques are designed to help you unlock the human potential in your business.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
An icon to many following the success of her book Lean In and her tenure as Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg opens up about the sudden death of her husband and how to ‘face adversity, build resilience, and find joy’. Co-authored by psychologist Adam Grant of Originals fame, Option B combines Sandberg’s insights with Grant’s research in what is a powerful and poignant study in how to overcome hardships such as illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, the violence of war and more. The book also explores how to help people in their time of crisis, develop compassion for ourselves and others, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities and workplaces.

Multipliers
Liz Wiseman
This revised and updated version of Wiseman’s acclaimed 2010 bestseller explores the difference between two types of leader — one that drains capability and intelligence from teams, and one that amplifies it to produce better results. The term ‘multipliers’ refers to the latter of the two — those leaders that inspire employees to think creatively, go above and beyond in their work, and deliver results that surpass expectations. Using data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman identifies the five disciplines that distinguishes ‘multipliers’ from ‘diminishers’ and how you can put them into practice. The 2017 edition includes two new chapters, and new examples of ‘multipliers’.

Leaders Eat Last
Simon Sinek
Sinek became an online sensation when his video on ‘the millennial question’ went viral, with more than 150 million views. His book Leaders Eat Last continues this conversation by exploring how leaders can inspire cooperation and change in the workplace, with a focus on the millennial generation. Sinek investigates why some organisations create environment in which people are inspired to go to work every day and trust each other deeply, while others are beset by infighting, fragmentation and failure. He explains concepts that help team members feel united and encourages them to use their collective energies to achieve success — most notably the ‘circle of safety’. An insightful guide about business leadership that also explains how understanding the chemicals in our body can help frame good workplace practices.

Everybody Lies
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
If you’ve ever wondered what the vast amount of information available to us reveals about ourselves and our world — this book is for you. With a daily intake of 8 trillion gigabytes of data for people searching the internet, Stephens-Davidowitz posits that the information we take in can tell us a lot about who we are and the fears, desires and behaviours that drive us — as well as the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. All of which can tell us more about the human psyche than ever before. Investigating a series of questions on various different topics, he offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves, our business, our relationships and our lives better — all of which he hopes will encourage us to look differently at the world.

Peak Performance
Brad Stulberg AND Steve Magness
Described by Arianna Huffington as “an essential playbook for success, happiness, and getting the most out of ourselves”, Stulberg and Magness’s book claims to be a guide to ‘elevate your game, avoid burnout, and thrive with the new science of success’. The authors look to reveal the common principles and practices of peak performers, whatever field they are in. From athletes to intellectuals and artists to business leaders, Peak Performance includes inspiring success stories and shows how to enhance your own performance in different ways such as finding balance between periods of intense work and rest, priming your mind and body for enhanced productivity, and harnessing the power of ‘purpose’.