Hopefully your summer plans include a family vacation. Whether it’s a road trip to your favorite adventure park or laying poolside in a tropical haven, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy a good business book. This list includes books about leading people, making decisions and all the other “stuff” that goes into a successful business. Most importantly, each will make you think – and that’s the best measure of a great book. So kick back with an ice cold beverage and dive in. And, don’t forget the sunscreen!

Switch
By Dan and Chip Heath

The subtitle sums it up perfectly: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. This amazing book is conversational, easy to read and includes actionable stories and tips on affecting change. Change is inevitable in business and learning how to manage it can ultimately mean success or failure. Switch will help you make change even when it’s difficult. If you’re tired of feeling like you have little power to guide your own life or business, this book is a great one! If there’s anything you can’t seem to solve (hard-to-please clients, a plateau in your business growth, etc) this book will teach you how to make the changes around you that will help you get out of whatever hole you’re stuck in.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
By Daniel Kahneman

Thirty pages into Thinking, Fast and Slow and you’ll start to question a lot of the decisions you’ve made. Kahneman looks at fast, intuitive, emotional decisions vs. slower, theoretically logical decisions and shows how the two combine (and compete) to help us make judgments—many of them wrong. Learn about risk, predictions, overconfidence and how to make better decisions.

Managing Right for the First Time
By David Baker

Many entrepreneurs create a company based on a technology, or a service or a value proposition… and many have absolutely no leadership or management background. Managing Right for the First Time lays out a simple, logical and intuitive blueprint that helps new leaders avoid the mistakes the rest of wish we hadn’t made. It’s of course no substitute for training and one-on-one coaching, but you’re on vacation, remember?

Rules for Revolutionaries
By Guy Kawasaki

When it comes to problem solving; it’s always easy to “do whatever we did last time”  but Rules for Revolutionaries teaches you how to approach innovation and problem solving from a fresh new perspective every time. Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. If you’re wondering why your design business isn’t growing, perhaps you’re doing something wrong, failing to innovate or missing a vital piece of the puzzle.

The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development Into Business Results
Calhoun Wick, Roy Pollock, Andrew McK. Jefferson, Richard Flanagan, Kevin Wilde

Of course, my personal favorite just coming from ASTD’s training in Chicago. This is a must-read for anyone serious about corporate learning and delivering results. It’s filled with case studies, tools and job aids. Excellent education is not enough, we must deliver results.

Kid Entrepreneurs
By Matthew and Adam Torren

And for the kiddos … sure the latest vampire tribology is sure to capture their attention, but this latest book breaks down what entrepreneurship is to kids in a clear and simple way. It’s perfect reading to get your kids to understand why some people go to the office to have a thing called a `career’ and others decide to make money on their own terms. With examples like the humble lemonade stand to make it more practical and applicable to kinds, it’s actually a brilliant breakdown of the fundamentals of a business that we sometimes overcomplicate as adults. Ok, maybe this one can wait until after vacation?