Reading List
Strategy
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
By Richard Rumelt
Profile Books 2017.
Easily the best first book on strategy for managers.
Organisations
Scaling up Excellence
By Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao
Random House, 2016.
The book taps into research on mass mobilisations to present compelling insights on how organisations can make changes and scale them up quickly.
Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don't.
By Jeffrey Pfeffer
Harper Business, 2010.
Senior managers need to understand power if they are to be effective. This is a great primer on the topic.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
By Robert B. Cialdini PhD
Harper Business 2007.
This is perhaps the pre-eminent book on the topic, and a nice complement to Pfeffer's book on power.
Teams
Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances
By J. Richard Hackman
Harvard Business Review Press 2002.
This is the all-time great book on teams. Definitely worth reading.
Technology and the Future of Work
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
By Shoshana Zuboff
Profile Books 2019.
Zuboff takes on one of the most important challenges of our times - how digitisation has ushered an era of effortless surveillance where companies can track every move we make. Incredibly well researched, it provides a very comprehensive perspective on the problem.
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond
By Daniel Susskind
Allen Lane 2020.
What does technology mean for jobs? It is easy to get wrapped into dire predictions of doom or hopelessly utopian bursts of optimism. Susskind provides a very incisive analysis that will make some of us uncomfortable, but also hopefully convince us that the future is brighter than it looks.
Innovation
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
By Safi Bahcall
Macmillan 2019.
The book presents a really good case for why leaders should entertain ideas that at first glance appear to be outlandish. Some of these ideas will transform your business.
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
By William Bridges
Capo Lifelong Books 2020.
Don’t be fooled by the recency of the release - the book has been around for 40 years. We all go through multiple transitions in life- careers, families, children, etc., and often find ourselves ill-equipped to deal with them. Bridges offers a very simple set of helpful prescriptions to navigate transitions.
Couples That Work: How To Thrive in Love and at Work
By Jennifer Petriglieri
Penguin 2019.
What does work-life balance mean for working couples? Petriglieri offers some very Insightful observations and practical advice.
The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World
By Andrew Scott & Lynda Gratton
Bloomsbury 2020
We live longer and are healthier and more productive for much longer chunks of our lives. In their earlier book Hundred Year Life, the authors focused on what this means for work, lives and society. This is a very nice follow-up.
Careers
The Business Environment
The Third Pillar
By Raghuram Rajan
Collins 2019.
The acclaimed economist and former central banker focuses on how communities and local governments can drive change and development in ways that conventional organisations have not been able to.
