5 Business books that deserve each minute you’ll spend reading them if you are a new manager

Reading time: 2 minutes

Popular wisdom says that most business books should be blog posts, and most blog posts should be tweets.

It is often excruciating, even when the idea at the core is brilliant, to see it hashed and re-hashed over 300 pages when 20 or 2 would have sufficed.

Here are 5 books worth each page, illustrated by one saved highlight each.

Managing Humans, by Michael Lopp

My first piece of advice to all new managers is: “Schedule one-on-ones with direct reports, keep them on the same day and time, and never cancel them.”

Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

THERE’S A RUSSIAN anecdote about a guy who has to amputate his dog’s tail but loves him so much that he cuts it off an inch each day, rather than all at once.

Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke

Once your team is checking to-do lists instead of watching metrics, you’ve institutionalized self-delusion.

Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss

It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there. By listening intensely, a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other side is experiencing.

Indistractable, by Nir Eyal

Think of all the ways people steal your time. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” Though Seneca was writing more than two thousand years ago, his words are just as applicable today. Think of all the locks, security systems, and storage units we use to protect our property and how little we do to protect our time.