Best Strategic Business Planning Books of 2025

Good to Great by Jim Collins is a must-read for business leaders who want to understand how some companies achieve enduring greatness. Collins and his team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained them for at least fifteen years. The book provides insights into the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great. The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. Overall, this book is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to build a great company.

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson is a practical guide to building and scaling a company's most important resource: its people. The book offers tactical information on crafting foundational documents, strategic planning, hiring, team development, and feedback mechanisms, all of which can be applied to companies of any size and industry. The author provides dozens of pages of worksheets, templates, exercises, and example documents to help company builders create scalable operating systems and lightweight processes. Overall, Scaling People is a detailed roadmap for creating sustainable and scalable companies that are set up for long-term success.

How to Grow Your Small Business by Donald Miller is a must-read for any entrepreneur who wants to take their business to the next level. Miller, a bestselling author, provides a 6-step plan that helps business owners grow their businesses with dependable and predictable results. The book covers key areas such as leadership, marketing, sales, and more. Miller's proven frameworks will help optimize your business and give you the freedom and flexibility to live life on your terms. With Miller's experience in growing his own business, readers can trust that the strategies presented in this book work. This book is highly recommended for anyone looking to grow their small business.

The Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition is a global phenomenon that has sold over 4 million copies and is recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written. The authors, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, challenge traditional thinking about strategy and argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating "blue oceans" - untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. This expanded edition includes updated content, new chapters, and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant.

Measure What Matters by John Doerr is a #1 New York Times Bestseller that introduces the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) goal-setting system, which has helped tech companies like Google achieve explosive growth. Doerr shares his experience of OKRs and how it can be applied to any organization. The book provides first-person behind-the-scenes case studies of companies that have implemented OKRs, including Google, Intel, and the Gates Foundation. The benefits of using OKRs are profound, including a focus on important work, fostering coordination, and boosting retention. Overall, Measure What Matters is an excellent resource for anyone looking to improve their business strategy.

Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy by Patrick Bet-David is a practical guide for entrepreneurs to achieve their professional goals. The book offers a valuable methodology to help entrepreneurs gain clarity, develop strategies, and build the right team based on strong values. The author uses his own experience to provide growth tactics for good times and bad, and insights on power plays and applying leverage. Overall, this book is a must-read for executives, strategists, or entrepreneurs who want to take their businesses to the next level.

Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI is a comprehensive guide for leaders who are looking to rewire their businesses for long-term success. The book provides a proven playbook that McKinsey & Company's own consultants use to help companies build capabilities to outcompete in the digital age. It covers six comprehensive sections, including creating a transformation roadmap, building a talent bench, adopting a new operating model, producing a distributed technology environment, embedding data everywhere, and unlocking user adoption and enterprise scaling. The book is exemplified with demonstrated case studies and illustrated with over 100 exhibits. Overall, Rewired is a must-read for leaders ready to do the hard work needed to rewire their company for success in the digital age.

The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure is a must-read for those determined to achieve their business dreams. The book introduces the principle of "Massive Action," which guarantees individuals and companies to realize their goals and dreams. The author demonstrates how to move into making the 10X Rule a discipline, offering the exact formula to solve problems and exceed targets. The book is a powerful tool to help readers defy mediocrity and achieve extreme success. Overall, The 10X Rule is a highly motivating and unique read in the business motivation and self-improvement genre.

The Book of Five Rings is a classic Japanese text, written by the undefeated swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, that outlines the "true principles" for achieving victory in martial arts and on the battlefield. Musashi's writings are based on his own experience, observation, and reason. Recently, the scrolls have gained international recognition in the business world as a means of resolving differences and achieving success. This luxurious hardback edition, with gold embossing and gilded page edges, is perfect as a gift and includes illustrations and deluxe ivory paper. The book's delineation of psychological strength, rigorous self-control, and practical application can be usefully applied to all aspects of life.

The revised edition of "Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't" by Verne Harnish is a practical guide for scaling any for-purpose or for-profit organization. The book focuses on the four major decisions every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. It includes a series of new One-Page tools, including the famous One-Page Strategic Plan and Rockefeller Habits Execution Checklist™. More than 80,000 firms worldwide have used these tools to scale their organizations successfully. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to grow their business.