Logistics managers need leadership, a lot of it. Every successful company needs a good leader, someone whose decisions make things work better for the entire supply chain.
That’s why it is very useful to sometimes count on external resources to gain perspective on how you are doing your job, if you are managing succesfully your fleet management, or your warehouse, and most importantly how are you leading your team. Are you doing it correctly? You can always do it better.
To help get you into this healthy approach, I researched the web and found some great books, with important material, that can help you gain more leadership over your team. Here are my favorites:
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
Author: Peter F. Drucker
According to Inc.com, this is one definitive management guide, focused on leadership in terms of achievement of goals through teamwork. For the author, the executive should be a person who boosts a group of people direct to success, instead of a boss who just drag employees through task fulfillment.
Good to Great
Author: Jim Collins
A very useful manual about beginning a business and how to boost it. Ganttic explains that “using 11 companies that made it from good to great as examples, this is an insightful book covering leadership across every aspect of running a company. Be it a young company or a well-established one, this book has tips on where to begin, how to be resourceful and how to grow.”
The One Minute Manager
Authors: Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
An easy management techniques sort of book. Goodreads says that “for more than twenty years, millions of managers in Fortune 500 companies and small businesses nationwide have followed The One Minute Manager's techniques, thus increasing their productivity, job satisfaction, and personal prosperity. These very real results were achieved through learning the management techniques that spell profitability for the organization and its employees.”
Also, Inc.com underlines that “along with The Greatest Salesman in the World, is the best of the "teach through parables" style of business book.”
The Age of Unreason
Author: Charles Handy
The author is considered by many as a pioneer in outside-the-box business thinking. Time magazine explains that “Handy, then (1989) a visiting professor at the London Business School, described dramatic social changes going on in everyday life and in the workplace. New technologies and the decrease of full-time positions, among other transformations, requires abandoning the established rules and experimenting with new ways of working with one another. Handy's book only grew in stature in the decades after its publication as the rise of the Internet, ubiquitous communication, increased outsourcing, and the explosion of social media proved his vision to be amazingly prescient.”
The Art of War
Author: Sun Tzu
This is one of the main milestone books about strategy. “Is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world –Goodreads notes- as eagerly studied in Asia by modern politicians and executives as it has been by military leaders since ancient times. As a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through understanding the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict.”
For Inc.com’s Geoffrey James, the best quote is: "Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
It’s practically a classic. Basically, because it analyzes human situations in a business context. According to Ganttic, the author gives “step-by-step advice on how to behave that would attract the type of attention that you need to plow your business to greater heights.”
The site also explains that is highly a recommended book because “the content is categorized into 12 principles. For example, principle 1 is ‘don’t criticize, condemn or complain’, principle 2 is ‘give honest and sincere appreciation’, principle 3 is ‘arouse in the other person an eager want’, principle 4 is ‘be a good listener, encourage others to talk about themselves’ and principle 5 is ‘talk in terms of the other person’s interests’.”
Think & Grow Rich
Author: Napoleon Hill
“I’m shocked by how many entrepreneurs and leaders haven’t read this book,” the best-selling author John Michael Morgan says. “This –he adds- is required reading if there ever was any. A classic written by Napoleon Hill in the 1930’s, it’s just as important today as it was then. In fact, I’d argue it’s more helpful and needed now than during the Great Depression when it was originally published. Hill’s principles of success are universal and the examples he shares of who used them effectively also happen to be some of history’s greatest leaders.”
What great management books would you recommend? Let us know and we will update this list. Also, have you read any of these books? Let me know your feedback.
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