Our book club is one of our favorite activities at UMC, Inc. As a company, we are committed to excellence and education, and we’ve found that by studying inspirational books together, we all learn new tricks. So in this blog, we want to invite you along with us (without making you read all the books) to see some of the truths we’ve learned from the books we’ve read. So what’s on our list?
- Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Vaden. In this insightful book, author Rory Vaden equates the simple decision to take the stairs over the escalator to a mindset built on discipline. As he outlines, sometimes the more difficult or harder choice like taking the stairs helps train your mind to be more disciplined. Varden argues that it’s not in the big, momentous decisions that we find success but in the small daily choices we make. As he says, “Success is often not the result of our major decisions, but more deceptively, it is the aggregate sum total of all our small and seemingly insignificant ones. Success comes down to choosing the hard right over the easy wrong, consistently.”
- Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. This compelling leadership guide from Echelon Front founders and former US Navy SEAL officers outlines the lessons of leadership they learned during their service in the Iraq war. At times their stories are harrowing, as they recount friendly fire tragedies, and horrific injuries, like being trapped behind enemy lines. Still, each story highlights an essential attribute of leadership like taking responsibility, identifying priorities, managing risks, and handling pressure. It’s a unique and exciting look at the essentials of leadership forged on the battlefield.
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This book is one of our favorites. We use the Theory of Constraints outlined in this book. For over 30 years, the principles and processes in this book have helped companies like ours find new and better ways to do things. But this book isn’t a management handbook. No, it’s a novel about a desperate plant manager, Alex, who must turn his plant around or risk being shut down. After connecting with his old physics teacher, he finds a new system to help boost productivity and find solutions to the plant’s problems. The story sweeps you off your feet and teaches you as you read. If you’re looking for a book that will completely change the way you think about organizational structure and planning, this book will do it.
These are just a few of the books our team has studied together. Each time we meet, we share what we have learned and apply those principles to our work here at UMC, Inc. If you’re looking for great books to help improve your business, read along with us as we study books like this and others. We’ll share more of the books we enjoy in future blogs!
