Building a company from the ground up? Flipping or scaling a business? Looking for collaborative leadership and work culture solutions? Coping with change while managing people on opposite sides of the pole? Or feeling your way through venture capitalists, crowdfunding, and loans?
These all time books from the TIGERS Book Shelf are worth your time. They’re compact, relevant, straight to the point, no nonsense. Learn from them, shorten your learning curve, and avoid the lethal pitfalls common to start ups and transforming organizations into more collaborative leadership and work culture solutions
Here are 10 books that deserve a spot on your collaborative leadership book shelf.
TIGERS AMONG US Winning Business Team Cultures and Why They Thrive, by Dianne Crampton (2010)
Why do the Davids outperform the Goliaths? How can some companies out-maneuver their better-funded, more technologically advanced rival? The common trait these “Davids” share is a robust team culture and within it, unparalleled loyalty. This book sifts through more than 20 years of research and exposes how hundreds of organizations (across different industries, sizes, and diverse financial capacities) manage to build fiercely loyal teams with one hand — while building profits and maintaining productivity with the other. But what does a good team culture really look like? This book demystifies it and gives real, concrete, and relevant examples. Aptly named TIGERS for Trust, Interdependence, Genuineness, Empathy, Risk, and Success, this book could easily become required reading for those seeking significant improvement in the bottom line through an organization’s greatest asset – its people.
BECOMING TIGERS, Leading Your Team to Success by Dianne Crampton (2020)
There are books you digest in chunks. And there are those you can hardly put down. If you’re up for a transformational book that explains the intricacies of good leadership painlessly, then Becoming Tigers is a must-read! Becoming Tigers reads like a children’s book (in fact, I’d highly recommend this to readers as young as seven! It’s never too early!). The tale narrates the story of two tiger tribes each with a dedicated leader, Kali and Ashoka. The stark difference between their leadership styles was put to the test after heavy rains wiped away their village. While the stories are fictional, the plot is remarkably familiar as similar situations happen in the workplace. In fact, the workplace could very well be the fictional jungle in the story with either a Kali-like boss or an Ashoka-like leader. Find out how the issues were resolved. It could very well be the key to turning things around in any organization with similar issues. This book is an entire year’s seminar packed into a hundred pages.
THE SLICING PIE HANDBOOK, Perfect Equity Splits for Bootstrapped Startups by Mike Moyer (2016)
Have you ever read a book and wished that you had read it years ago? This is THAT book. Slicing Pie offers to be a universal, one-size-fits-all solution for the allocation and recovery of equity in an early-stage bootstrapped startup. When someone contributes to a startup, they are actually betting on its future winnings. These future winnings include a share of the profits or proceeds when the company sells. Thing is, (and here’s where problems begin), participants in a startup company bet more than just cash. Some put in time, ideas, relationships, personal credit and loans, facilities, supplies… This book proposes a solution that converts all contributions to a standard unit, and in effect, the “fairest” way to split equity among every investor, founder, partner, and employee.
Have you ever read a book and wished that you had read it years ago? This is THAT book. Slicing Pie offers to be a universal, one-size-fits-all solution for the allocation and recovery of equity in an early-stage bootstrapped startup. When someone contributes to a startup, they are actually betting on its future winnings. These future winnings include a share of the profits or proceeds when the company sells. Thing is, (and here’s where problems begin), participants in a startup company bet more than just cash. Some put in time, ideas, relationships, personal credit and loans, facilities, supplies… This book proposes a solution that converts all contributions to a standard unit, and in effect, the “fairest” way to split equity among every investor, founder, partner, and employee.
GROW THE PIE, How Great Companies Delivery Both Purpose and Profit by Alex Edmans (2020)
Finance departments are often seen as the enemy of responsible business thinking that being “socially responsible” will eat into profits. In short, an unnecessary expense. But here, Edmans proposes that companies who care for their community reap significant financial rewards in the long-term for as long as they uphold a “growing the pie mindset”. This isn’t wishful thinking. The author backs his claim with solid research and the updated version of the book includes how responsibility is realistic and achievable even in a pandemic. If you think this is stuff for billion-dollar companies with deep pockets, think again. Edmans is liberal with examples of boutique companies who banked on their expertise to help their community. You don’t need to wait for your start-up to spit out millions of dollars. You CAN create BOTH PROFIT AND SOCIAL VALUE regardless. It’s not an either-or choice.
WILL WORK FOR PIE: BUILDING YOUR STARTUP USING EQUITY INSTEAD OF CASH by Mike Moyer (2021)
How do those start-ups do it? Do they all pitch a to-die-for idea, hope and pray that some hotshot notices and risks putting in money, then rake in gold at year’s end? Everybody goes home with a huge piece of the bacon, right? Well, not always. The journey to that proverbial pot of gold can be lethal if resources aren’t divided properly. Equity is a powerful tool. It’s a great magnet for talent and resources. But it can derail progress and even cause irreversible damage if allocated inadequately. Read in tandem with The Slicing Pie Handbook (See #3). Unless you’re funding your startup with your own money and you have enough stashed to pay everyone their fair share of salaries and bonuses, then this book is a must-read.
PITCH NINJA: PERSUASIVE PITCHING AND PRESENTING by Mike Moyer (2014)
“I look forward to sales presentations and sales pitches!” said no one ever. Truth is, we all dread that “it’s just 5 minutes” sales talk, more so those committee meetings where decisions must be made. But the secret to getting everyone interested isn’t the number of ice breakers you do or the freebies/concessions you hand out. Neither is being a Toastmasters champ a requirement. Rather, it’s the way you present – from the gestures you use to the way your audience is seated, down to where you stand when presenting a slide. Moyer, who authored books #3 (The Slicing Pie Handbook) and #5 (Will Work for Pie) gets into details in this book. He talks about three distinct zones: The Intimacy Zone, the Excitement Zone, and the Information Zone. With each of these zones comes a set of non-verbal skills that lets you connect with your audience at a different level. Everyone needs to persuade at one point in their life. This is easy reading, and one which I highly recommend you read regardless of industry or job description.
If you find yourself struggling with a task (reading a book, getting started with a fitness plan, pursuing a goal), then you just might find answers in this book. Start With Why is big on how so many factors come into play when influencing human behavior. The author posits that there are two ways to get people to do things: MANIPULATION and INSPIRATION. The preferred method is of course the latter. Inspiration is the more effective and sustainable one. But just how do you inspire? The answer lies in the type of leadership and how crucial it is for leaders to take a risk and go against the status quo to find unique solutions. A concept central to this book is the Golden Circle and how the most important question in ANY endeavor is your “WHY?”. What is your motivation and purpose? Once your WHY is clear, then you move on to the “HOW” (methods and processes) and the “WHAT” (desired outcome).
WHY STARTUPS FAIL: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann (2021)
More than two-thirds of start-ups fail to deliver a positive return to investors. One of the more excruciating questions to ask is “why?”. Despite a sound business plan, an airtight contingency, and leaders who have proven track records, why do most startups still miss the mark? This book identifies patterns of failure. One pattern is dangerously relying on the venture’s “good idea” alone. An example cited by Eisenmann here is that of a clothing start-up. The idea was sound, and initial sales were great. But the partners had to close down in one year simply because their response to action was slow (considering that the partners shared decision-making authority and neither was willing to strain their friendship). Neither of them had experience with clothing design and manufacturing either. Issues like these could have been avoided by bringing in another cofounder with the proper industry experience or even outsourcing the design and production process. He outlines other patterns that will feel familiar to those who have started businesses of their own. This book is an essential read for entrepreneurs and leaders who want to scale their businesses.
Probably the greatest start-up myth is that the formula for success is fixed. Determination + brilliance + great timing + great product = SUCCESS. Most of us believe that fame and fortune can be had with a great idea… so much so that we abhor sharing ideas with friends thinking they could steal them! Truth be told, many ideas that clicked were never that “great”. The average person has had 20 awesome ideas. But the issue here isn’t the idea, or the brilliance, or the timing. Its EXECUTION. The Lean Startup’s author offers stellar counsel from his experience as a startup advisor and founder. One of the bigger ideas that I found most useful is the concept of building first, measuring next, and learning last. The shoot first, aim later approach has been useful for startups because in a volatile, fast-paced industry, forecasts hardly work. The power of feedback and observation couldn’t be more emphasized. This book is rigorous but immensely practical, every serious entrepreneur should read it.
DARE TO LEAD Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by Brené Brown (2018)
The world needs brave leaders. We want them to be fearless demigods who dive into the unknown without hesitation. And yet today’s leaders need to go beyond demi-god status… they need to be real and vulnerable. Vulnerable is hardly a term to describe a leader or a manager, but it’s a trait that anyone should have to build courage. How so? You have to be willing to have conversations that make you feel exposed, even awkward. Then you get clear about your values and act in alignment with those values. Brown reminds us that vulnerability is NOT disclosure. It’s a real, hard look at getting comfortable with discomfort. Can you manage uncertainty, risk, and exposure? Can you, as a leader, sustain hard conversations, tell the truth, give and receive feedback even when it’s hard? What strikes me the most about this book is Brown’s emphasis on building trust. Fear has a short shelf life and leaders can’t lead with fear for long. This is a must especially for leaders-in-training.
The distance between you and a world of knowledge is a book. It can also spell the difference between irreversible damage and survival. Dodge the bullet. Get your startup running with effective collaborative leadership practices and work culture by having these essentials on your reading list NOW.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Claudia Craven
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS(R) Success Series is a robust collaborative workforce and high performance team development system. Founded on four years of research and subsequent validation, TIGERS offers group behavior assessment based on six collaborative principles – trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success for groups of eight or more people. Follow up training, coaching, consulting and licensing is available to independent consultants and qualified coaches, project managers and internal HR professionals. A Bend, Oregon based company, contact us here to schedule a discovery conversation.
