Book Recommendations for Leadership Development - A Future Agency Leader Reading List
Wondering how to impart your business acumen and leadership knowledge to your agency managers? For a start, here is the list of books we recommend all mid-level managers read... we actually buy the ones with three asterisks for our consulting clients!
DIGITAL AGENCY GROWTH
***Grow Your Digital Agency – Robert Craven
Does what it says on the tin
EXIT
***Built to Sell – John Warrillow
A game changer for anyone trying to grow an agency
**Small Giants – Bo Burlingham
Why entrepreneurs turn their back on the big exit cheque
STRATEGY: PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION
***The One Thing – Gary Keller & J Papasan
A simple, powerful process for focus and clarity
***Digital Agency Strategy Workbook - Robert Craven
A full toolbox for strategy design, implementation, and monitoring
**Measure What Matters - John Doerr
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – Richard Rumelt
The difference and why it matters
How a few companies make it and the rest don’t
Get a grip on your business
FINANCE
**Profit First – Mike Michalowicz
Re-organise your finances so you get paid properly
Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits - Graham Crabtree
There’s gold in your simple numbers, if you use them to make day-to-day decisions
MARKETING AND SALES
The psychology of persuasion
***Getting Naked - Patrick Lencioni
Shedding the three fears that sabotage client loyalty
This is Marketing - Seth Godin
You can’t be seen till you learn to see
Why should people buy from you if you are the same as the competition?
An innovative method for presenting, persuading and winning the deal
***They Ask, You Answer - Marcus Sheridan
A compelling manifesto to answer all your customers’ questions
PEOPLE
**The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
the many pitfalls that teams face as they seek to "grow together".
Who - Geoff Smart & Randy Street
Solve your number one problem
**The Advantage - Patrick Lencioni
Why organisational health trumps everything else in business
How to be honest with your reports
THE ORGANISATION
The revolutionary management system that abolishes hierarchy
Reinventing Organisations - Frederic Laloux
A guide to creating organisations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness
How we built a workplace people love
WORK PHILOSOPHY
Lost and Founder - Rand Fishkin
A painfully honest field guide to the start-up world
*The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
There are no rules and there are no easy answers
Rules for focussed success in a distracted world
Four-Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss
If you could 10x your output how would your business and private life change?
*Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
The original Bible of the modern Personal Effectiveness World
Why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. Old small business classic.
**The Checklist Manifesto – Atul Gawande
How to get things right
Madison Avenue Manslaughter – Michael Farmer
An inside view of fee-cutting clients, profit-hungry owners, and declining ad agencies
**15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management – Kevin Kruse
Productivity secrets
The Thought Leaders Practice - Matt Church
Leverage your personal brand as an expert
Transform your life with tiny changes in behaviour
Next steps? Read about ADVANCE - LEADERSHIP. Applications are currently open for mid-level agency managers, on our peer-learning mastermind that develops the next wave of agency leaders.
