3 Fantastic Non-Business Books (for Business)
I love business, but not business books. Most would be better off as blog posts.
The best books for business that I’ve read are not business books. They are non-fiction books that synthesize & distill powerful ideas that are highly relevant to business. Here are three of my all-time favorites:
Most people in business think they are a good at negotiating. But how many people actually have a coherent strategy they use for negotiations? Not many. Getting To Yes provides a simple but powerful framework to dramatically boost negotiation skills.
One of my favorite tactical insights from Getting To Yes is to focus on interests, not positions. Let’s say you are in a complex negotiation. The other side makes you a proposal. You might be tempted to quickly make a counteroffer. Don’t! Instead of getting caught in a back-and-forth series of positional bargaining, focus on interests. Start by asking questions. What components of the offer do they care most about? Care least about?
Often, exploring the other party’s interests reveals asymmetries — areas where one side cares more than the other. This opens up terrain for “win-win” outcomes where both sides can get the things they want the most. Read Getting To Yes and you’ll quickly understand this and a lot more about best practices in negotiations.
Feeling Good is terribly, even tragically underrated. I say that not just because buying it for $6.99 in my early 20’s was by far the best mental health investment I ever made. It’s because there are numerous studies showing that its efficacy is on par with antidepressants and live psychotherapy, which can easily cost 100-1000x more.1
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the gold standard of psychotherapy, and Feeling Good (and its more recently updated version, Feeling Great) offers a huge, helpful dose. I found it immensely helpful in building up my own psychological resilience.2
One example from the book is avoiding the so-called “tyranny of the shoulds.” We create stress for ourselves when we say “I should do [x].” This word, “should,” is not helpful! As adults, we can largely do what we want. We might not enjoy doing something, like working out. But we value its output, like being healthier. Don’t do something because you should do it, do it because you want to do it. Reframing from “should” to “want” is a trick that’s saved me a lot of anxiety over the years.
I picked up Impro one bored day in my college library and I was captivated. A little while later, I enrolled in an improv class and found Impro on the (short) required reading list. The book starts out a little dry, so I recommend going straight to the good stuff: chapter 3, “Status.” (free PDF version of book here)
Before Impro, I was only vaguely aware of the concept of status. Afterwards, I began to appreciate that it’s a social gravity that can deeply weigh on our feelings & actions — even though we’re often not explicitly aware of it. For example, while we might not consciously think about status when we watch comedy, it weighs heavily upon what we perceive as “funny” or “not funny.” Consider:
Scenario #1: A middle-aged man in an expensive suit confidently strides into a meeting. He steps on a banana peel and slips, falling on his behind.
Scenario #2: An old man in shabby clothes walks slowly down a sidewalk using a cane. He steps on a banana peel and slips, falling on his behind.
#1 will the draw the laughs, not #2.
Why?
The man in the expensive suite is high status. Slipping on a banana peel plunges his status. This type of status reversal is funny (think of the old Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places). The man with the cane is already low-status, so there’s nothing inherently funny about grounding him further in low status.3
I find the concept of status helps distill social concepts that are otherwise hard to pin down. For example:
How to define an “asshole?”
It’s someone who is high status in a zero-sum way. Someone who acts high status yet makes others feel low-status.
What about “charisma?”
A charismatic person is alos high-status. The subtle-but-massive difference is that the charismatic person raises the status of those around them.
I find the concepts in Impro quite empowering. They highlight an oft-obscured dimension of social behavior. They also show that social behavior can be remarkably non-zero-sum. The best cultures in business will model this dynamic.
My (highly cynical) view is that CBT and this book don’t align well with the economic incentives of the Therapy Industry, hence they aren’t as popular at they deserve. CBT is a limited-duration treatment, which means it doesn’t generate long-term recurring revenue for therapists.
If you’re not convinced, Wikipedia has a good entry on the book and here are some positive reviews.
Humor can vary across cultures - I’m coming from a US/UK comedic perspective. Other cultures might laugh at the misfortune of the low status person. The key is that it’s the specific status dynamics that heavily impact the perception of humor.
"Getting to Yes" is fantastic. You wouldn't call it a business book though?