i found tony hsieh's Delivering Happiness to be a very good read with respect to developing a culture you're proud of.. it's a nice look at what i like to call "tribal ethics." any other recommendations?

Delivering Happiness By Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Great book on Tony's journey to building startups and finding what truly makes him happy

Huge loss. His book Delivering Happiness is a must read for any entrepreneur.

It's not a new book, but Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh has had a great impact on me.

Fun and easy to read book too. :)

Horrible news. Like many others here his book Delivering Happiness reached me. He was one of the good ones. He won't be forgotten.

My condolences to his friends and family.

That The Innovator's Dilemma is not on that list shows that it is complete and utter fluff. Delivering Happiness is probably a great book, but the rest looks like self-help-new-age gibberish. Better use the classics, as kitsune_ suggested, then.

I liked Delivering Happiness too - a great book.

For me "How We Decide" has been the best book of the year as it gave me quite some insights into human brain works and how to deal with different situations.

Book - Delivering Happiness by the late Tony Hsieh

Newsletter - The Service Zealot (https://servicezealot.com), a weekly advice column for service business operators fed up with the status quo.

Peopleware and Slack by Tom DeMarco are must-reads. I re-read Peopleware once every few years. I also liked Delivering Happiness (by @zappos) and Tribal Leadership, although they are more about organizations than management per se.

Reading "Delivering Happiness" inspired me to quit a legal career I hated, learn to code on nights and weekends. Today, I'm the CTO of a promising startup. Thank you, Tony.

Have you ever read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh? Sounds very similar to your story, he automated his work using a script, I think he even stopped going into the office

DELIVERING Happiness by Tony Hsieh is an incredible book, especially concerning their customer service focus. (If you're especially interested in their culture, they give their culture book away for free at request).

Also, Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston is a great book with some great insights by early entrepreneurial efforts.

RIP, his book Delivering Happiness was such an inspiration early in my career

Here are some of the top of my head, assuming you already read some:

- The New Capitalist Manifesto - Umar Haque

- Net Smart - Howard Rheingold

- Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

Delivering Happiness is great. I loved it too.

The best book of 2010 for me
"Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall:
http://www.amazon.ca/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/...

There are so many great things about this book. It has an amazing story and also delivers a message why humans were born to run.

Riyria Revelations trilogy - quite good. Follows two thieves for hire. Read the books in publication order

Ready player one - liked it

samurai's garden

Expanse series by James Corey entertaining

Steelheart and Firefight by Sanderson- good but like Mistborn better

Worm online serial parahumans good

Nonfiction I read: Delivering happiness, Drive, Power of Habit, Power of full engagement

This kind of amazing customer care is something every company can aspire to - and not just for the obvious reason of making people smile. This cost LEGO maybe $300 and has netted them an incredible amount of positive press and rekindled emotional connections with their brand.

If you want to read two great and inspiring books about this, read The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk and Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. We're working to build a culture of over the top customer service and these books are our bibles.

You should read Delivering Happiness

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Books that have really inspired me/changed my perspective:

Good to Great, by Jim Collins (and all his other books)

How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh

Peak, by Chip Conley

As far as books I find entertaining and stimulating, but not necessarily actionable, anything by Michael Lewis or Malcolm Gladwell.

Creators & Casualties of the Age of the Internet by Kieran Levis - The chapters on Steve Jobs alone will put some fire in your belly.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh - reading this now...inspirational.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO)

This really reminds me of Zappos's Culture and the great stuff that Tony Hsieh and others have been working on for the past years.

I strongly recommend Delivering Happiness by Hsieh to anyone who is interested in this type of approach to employee care. Very inspiring stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-P...

Without more context than the title and the linked email, it's pretty easy to call Hsieh's move brash or tried-and-futile. But the guy is often regarded as the premier management CEO of his generation, and homogenous culture is strongly enforced in his hiring process. Employees love Hsieh because they're (largely) on the same page, not bc of a reality distortion field. After seeing Hsieh's track record and reading "Delivering Happiness" (Zappos' story) and "The Everything Store" (Parent Amazon's story where Zappos gets a vignette), I'd rather watch and learn than shoot it down based on my engineering sensibilities.

My recommendation is to reflect on what you read. Here's why:

I'm actually trying to cycle off reading business books. I've read so many that I need to spend time implementing what I read, rather than taking in more information. I'm like a chain reader, putting down one book and then picking up another without spending time reflecting on what I learnt.

I noticed this pattern so I've started trying to identify 3 things I learned and/or could implement to my own business upon finishing a book. For me, the reflection on what I learned is more important, I'm not much of a note taker but have the ability to retain vast amounts of information. If something really hits me, Ill put it in Evernote. Without the reflection piece this is probably relegated to my subconscious. I'm actually thinking of going back and trying to think of 3 things from each book I've read previously that I can now record.

This morning I finished the book Focus by Al Ries. It's good.

Here are the 3 things I learnt (recorded upon finishing in Evernote):
1. Focused companies are more profitable.
2. Brand extension is bad.
3. Focus may cause shrinkage in the short term but is far better in the long term.

Hope that helps.

Recommended books:
- How to win friends and influence people (timeless classic)
- How to get Rich by Felix Dennis (spammy title, good read)
- Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrari (networking tips)
- Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (any business that focuses on customer service is going to do better)
- Purple Cow by Seth Godin (classic)
- The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E Gerber (a great mindset to have for your business)
- The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes (slow start but simply awesome)
- All the 37signals books
- Lean Startup (obviously)

These are just of the top of my head.

I don't keep books. I figure I can always buy them again if I need.

I gave up tracking what I read, but Goodreads.com was good of that.

Cormo.Energy|Remote, San Francisco, CA, Berlin, Germany | FLEXIBLE_IDEA | Solar Energy, Renewables energy, clean tech, climate tech, fintech, ocean economy, supply chain |looking for technical co-founder

I am searching for a Co-founder to build a business with sustainable impact, yet a profitable and scalable business case.

About me:

I have bootstrapped a consulting business specializing in Industrial IoT / Smart Factory and Product Management, my background is in finance. I have been going back and forth between the US / San Francisco and Berlin, Germany for the past 3 years.

Status Quo:
Since a few months, I have decided to venture into the next business and took a look at different topics in fields that have a clear climate / sustainability impact - areas of interests:

- Supply Chain, Transport, Shipping
- Ocean Economy
- FinTech
- Renewable Energies / Solar
- New Work / Remote Work / Digital Nomading
- Outdoor, Extreme & Boardsports
- Mobility
- B2B-Platforms & marketplaces

Ideally, your background has a stronger focus on tech / engineering. However, most importantly you are an entrepreneur with the drive to iterate and test until we hit a nerve and then bring the endurance, flexibility, people & management skills, and the growth mindset to scale.

To give you a hint of what has inspired my business philosophy over recent years -
- Let my people go surfing, Yvonne Chouinard
- How to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie
- Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh (R.I.P.)

Next steps:
I have been working on a solar energy case that is relatively close to pitching angel investors and that would be ready to get some public grants in Germany. However, I am open to taking an entirely new direction or to jump on your early stage business/idea.

The most important thing is to work with great people. Therefore, this is more about you than about the business we pick.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-hamel-11baa841/

They dramatically changed their business model twice. The second change was less dramatic in direction, but more dramatic in that the business had much more inertia.

That's the point of the post, and it's an impressive achievement. Read Tony Hsieh's (Zappos) "Delivering Happiness" if you want to appreciate how hard it is to build a business on drop-shipping, and how hard it is to move to full inventory.

I realize this isn't a battle worth fighting, but everyone needs to stop being pedantic over the use of the word "pivot". It had meaning before Eric Ries used it, and it will continue to have intrinsic meaning no matter how narrowly it's defined in the context of the Lean Startup movement. The business changed directions. Let the man call it a pivot.

I've been 'product managing' for 4 years now in NYC and haven't found very many books useful. Here are a few:

-Getting Real / Rework (37 signals) - Build a lean product

-Don't Make Me Think - Usability 101

-Web Analytics 2.0 - Metrics are your best friend

-Viral Loop - Great companies and how they did it

-Delivering Happiness - Last 50 pages are phenomenal for building your company's "culture"

* Thinking Fast, Slow by Daniel Kahneman

* Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

* Slack, by Tom DeMarco (also re-read Peopleware). Both of these books are fundamental to anyone developing software within an organization.

* Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh. It's not fantastic but it's helpful if you are trying to build a business.

* Tribal Leadership - recommended by the above. Not great but interesting.

* Rework - short read, worth the time.

* Managing Humans by Rands - very entertaining, useful if you manage people.

Other stuff I read is not worth mentioning in a "best books" list.

Just.do.what.you.fuckin.want.

Seriously. Life is all about enjoying yourself.

I'm 21 now. Similar things used to hit me 1 year ago very often. Now that happens just once in a while. How I fixed this? I started enjoying myself whenever I can. What I changed? I stopped caring what I "should" do.

Go to library and read Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London". And Zappo's "Delivering Happiness", at least the very last chapter. I believe those should help you quite a lot.