Stephen Covey made it one of the seven habits in 1989 and the phrase became ordinary American business speech. The claim inside it is that a negotiation is a joint problem, and the vocabulary carried the claim into general use.
books
Critique of Pure Reason
Kant’s project in 1781 was not to reach conclusions about the world. It was to examine the instrument first — to establish what reason can and cannot validly do, before using it.
Critique, in his title, does not mean criticism. It means examining the apparatus.
The most influential work in German philosophy is an inspection of the method, carried out before the work begins.
Getting to Yes
Fisher and Ury published it in 1981, out of the Harvard Negotiation Project. It has sold millions of copies and its vocabulary — interests not positions, BATNA, objective criteria — is now ordinary American business language. A method for reaching agreement became a mass-market American bestseller.
Built to last
The phrase exists in American English as praise, and Collins and Porras made it a bestselling business book title in 1994 — about companies rather than products. When Americans reach for the phrase, they tend to apply it to institutions.
The matter-book
German splits books into Belletristik and Sachbuch. Fine writing, and matter-book.
English calls the second category non-fiction — defined by what it is not. German names it for what it contains.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie published it in 1936. It has sold tens of millions of copies and has never been out of print. Its argument is that business outcomes follow from how people feel about you, and its instructions are about attention, names, listening and genuine interest. An American business classic is a book about liking.
Reengineering the Corporation
Hammer and Champy, 1993. One of the bestselling American business books ever published, and its instruction was to stop improving existing processes and abolish them. The subtitle was a manifesto for business revolution. Millions of American managers bought a book telling them their processes were the problem.
Don’t Make Me Think
Steve Krug’s 2000 book on web usability became one of the most widely read American design texts, and the title is the argument. The user should not have to work out how the thing operates.
The one-minute praising
Blanchard’s method is specific: tell the person exactly what they did right, tell them how it makes you feel, pause, and make physical contact — a hand on the shoulder, a handshake. A choreography, taught to millions of American managers, for delivering approval.
Catch them doing something right
The One Minute Manager, published by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson in 1982, spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than fifteen million copies.
Its central instruction is that most managers look for people doing something wrong, and the good manager does the opposite — watches for what is being done right and says so immediately.
The most-quoted line from the most-read American management book is an instruction to go looking for reasons to praise.