Year-end is the time for a clear-out of the business books I haven’t read and those I never finished.
We get sent dozens of business books to review, but I have got through very few over the years. Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma has stayed with me. Confronting Mistakes: Lessons from the Aviation Industry when Dealing with Error by Jan Hagen, which I am reading at the moment, may do so too.
Many other management books are overenthusiastic, lacking in nuance or too impressed by current fads to stand the test of time.
I think the best books for business are non-business books, and the best of those provide at least one important management insight. You probably have your own. These are mine:
● The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers. This guide to how “to get an idea as exactly as possible out of one mind into another” will mark its 60th anniversary next year.