Five management books that could really change your work style

Aptly timed words of wisdom in the workplace can have a profound impact on the course of your day, your week, or even the bigger work and career decisions we make.

Inspired to find some words of wisdom thus week with the power to change the way you think about your roles at work, or perform your day to day tasks, Team Adzuna have been hitting the bookshelves in a hunt for the most inspirational management tomes around – old and new.

So, without further ado, here’s a rundown of five of our favourites, for your reading pleasure.

In today’s viral age, more and more organisations are placing value on the power of “making something go viral”. Employees who truly understand the triggers of social media contagion, and can offer expertise on how to optimise the chances of content being shared peer to peer are amongst the most valued of today’s workforce. Without giving away too many of the book’s trade secret’s, Berger spells out the recipe to social success with seven key steps, and some great anecdotes. For employees at any stage in their career, this is pretty much a must read.

Adzuna advice: Watch out for the $100 cheesesteak – one of our favourite marketing case studies, ever.

An oldie but goodie, this super-short time management tome is the best guide to priotisation we have ever read – and still remains so today.  Making management skills, especially for first-time managers, seem remarkably easy, it takes hardly any time at all to read, and the words of wisdom it contains have potential to stay with you for much of your career. And there isn’t a single bit of business textbook jargon to be seen.

We’ve all been told to follow our passion, and the rest will follow, naturally enabling us to excel in our chosen field. Newport argues that passion, even assuming we can find that one thing that inspires us above all others, might not magically equate to talent and ability. He argues that adopting a “craftsman approach” honing our skills and abilities through dedication, practice and commitment, produces far more reliable and tangible results.

Adzuna advice: Honing your skills to perfection can hardly be bad advice for those seeking to progress up the career ladder.

The best lessons in entrepreneurial thinking can come from the most unlikely sources, argue Clay and Phillips, as they look to case studies from the very edges of societies for successful examples of thinking outside the box and disrupting the norm. Expect to explore the entrepreneurial secrets of pirates, highwaymen and hackers, the secret innovators we rarely use as case studies of innovation. The authors explore what makes these individuals stand apart, what makes them think differently to the law0abiding mainstream, and what qualities from these wayward thinkers we can apply to disrupting the business world. A fun look at the nature of entrepreneurial spirit for up-and-coming innovators and disrupters.

Adzuna advice: A little bit of swashbuckle can certainly add to your entrepreneurial flair, but beware of taking things a step too far, as employers begin to display lower tolerance of staff standing out from the crowd for all the wrong reasons.

In a business culture defined by Facebook, Google, Snapchat and others,  small players are no longer restricted to the lower echelons of the social strata – phenomenal growth curves, and agile organisations overtaking their colossal rivals has become the norm. Morgan’s no-nonsense explanation of challenger strategies have more potential applications than first meets the eye. Well worth a read.

Adzuna advice: Applying the theories in this book to your own career provides a blueprint to shifting your thinking about your own career – the entrepreneurial spirit in this book inspire you to think truly disruptively about your own development, and that of your team. The world is your oyster.

If all those ideas have inspired you to hunt for your next role, check out the vacancies available at www.adzuna.co.uk.