Ask HN: Fictional business books like The Goal

8•jimnotgym•1d ago

I feel like The Goal and The Phoenix Project were seminal books, partly because their fictional style allowed people to see the ideas in applied form. Are there any other fictional business books we should be reading

Comments

romanhn•23h ago

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni is another classic.

varlock•15h ago

Another one by the same author, which I heartily recommend, is "The Ideal Team Player". Read it many years ago, and I still use it as a basic framework when I interview candidates (in a nutshell, you want someone humble, hungry, and smart).

I personally wouldn't recommend "Death by Meeting", though. Maybe it's just because it didn't resonate much with me, so YMMV.

NiceAdvice•19h ago

I'm a big fan of The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco.

Tomte•16h ago

See my notes: https://www.thomas-huehn.com/the-deadline/

keiferski•14h ago

It's designed more for kids, but I found it useful for understanding basic accounting concepts: The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting From the Lemonade Stand.

I also found two of the novels in Clavell's Asian Saga to be quite business-focused: Tai-Pan and Noble House. Not so much for the nuts-and-bolts of business, but just a large business organization being founded and growing over the course of multiple centuries.

paulcole•2h ago

Get a Grip by Gino Wickman introduces EOS through a narrative story.

Why is it so hard to find founders to bounce off ideas in city you are visiting?

Removing "Annoying" Windows 10 Features Is DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says(2020)

Ask HN: Is big tech still more stable?

K Set Cover Solving Algorithm

Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

Ask HN: Are LLMs useful or harmful when learning to program?

Ask HN: Anyone using Chrome ext with AI for daily copywriting/social media?

A new way to automatically deprecate DockerHub repository: Bulk Archive

Remind HN: Today Is Mother's Day in US

Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

Ask HN: What is the worst communications tool you've ever used?

Ask HN: Fictional business books like The Goal

Qneurons: Quantum Technology Could Stimulate Human Cognitive Evolution"

Ask HN: RAG or shared memory for task planning across physical agents?

What are some app ideas that you think would benefit people on a perosnal level?

Ask HN: If 1 person can control 10 AI agents, why would still need that person?

Ask HN: Hackathons feel fake now

Ask HN: Anyone using knowledge graphs for LLM agent memory/context management?

Blazeio.SharpEvent: A Python Async Primitive That Scales to 1M Waiters with O(1)

AI Summarizer: Summarize Web, YouTube and PDFs in Seconds–Free

Ask HN: Escaping a Low-Paying Nepali IT Job and Ineffective Learning Cycle

Ask HN: Are you using AI coding assistance?

Ask HN: What would you do with the #manga chat channel in Libera IRC network?

Ask HN: Is there a service that offers Common Crawl as an API?

Ask HN: AI-Filtering Browser Extension?

Ask HN: How do you obtain software development contracts?

OSUniverse: Building a Better OSWorld

Ask HN: Did Aliexpress stop shipping to US?

Ask HN: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 arrives May 19 at $299 revive PC builds?

Getting tired of Helm – any better way to handle deployments in Kubernetes?

Ask HN: Fictional business books like The Goal

Comments

Why is it so hard to find founders to bounce off ideas in city you are visiting?

Removing "Annoying" Windows 10 Features Is DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says(2020)

Ask HN: Is big tech still more stable?

K Set Cover Solving Algorithm

Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?

Ask HN: Are LLMs useful or harmful when learning to program?

Ask HN: Anyone using Chrome ext with AI for daily copywriting/social media?

A new way to automatically deprecate DockerHub repository: Bulk Archive

Remind HN: Today Is Mother's Day in US

Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

Ask HN: What is the worst communications tool you've ever used?

Ask HN: Fictional business books like The Goal

Qneurons: Quantum Technology Could Stimulate Human Cognitive Evolution"

Ask HN: RAG or shared memory for task planning across physical agents?

What are some app ideas that you think would benefit people on a perosnal level?

Ask HN: If 1 person can control 10 AI agents, why would still need that person?

Ask HN: Hackathons feel fake now

Ask HN: Anyone using knowledge graphs for LLM agent memory/context management?

Blazeio.SharpEvent: A Python Async Primitive That Scales to 1M Waiters with O(1)

AI Summarizer: Summarize Web, YouTube and PDFs in Seconds–Free

Ask HN: Escaping a Low-Paying Nepali IT Job and Ineffective Learning Cycle

Ask HN: Are you using AI coding assistance?

Ask HN: What would you do with the #manga chat channel in Libera IRC network?

Ask HN: Is there a service that offers Common Crawl as an API?

Ask HN: AI-Filtering Browser Extension?

Ask HN: How do you obtain software development contracts?

OSUniverse: Building a Better OSWorld

Ask HN: Did Aliexpress stop shipping to US?

Ask HN: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 arrives May 19 at $299 revive PC builds?

Getting tired of Helm – any better way to handle deployments in Kubernetes?