Book recommendations for business leaders: 7/12/18

Jul 12, 2018 | Reading Lists

Stephen King says that if you want to be a writer, there are two things you must do: read a lot and write a lot. This is about the “read a lot” part. I include reading lists and book reviews that will help you do business more effectively and write better for business.

In this post, I point you to reviews of Nimble: Make Yourself and Your Company Resilient in the Age of Constant Change, The Tyranny of Metrics, Leading Professionals: Power, Politics and Prima Donnas, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything, and The Art of Servant Leadership II: How You Get Results Is More Important Than the Results Themselves

From Wharton: Five Ways Companies Can Be More Nimble

“In order to manage and surmount uncertainties, companies need to become intelligence-driven, and that is achieved by understanding and acting upon five types of agility, notes Baba Prasad, CEO of the Vivékin Group, a management consulting firm in Durham, N.C., and in India. He discusses these concepts in his book Nimble: Make Yourself and Your Company Resilient in the Age of Constant Change. Prasad spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about his book in a recent interview.”

From Theodore Kinni: How to Cure a Bad Case of Metric Fixation

“The Tyranny of Metrics is a pearl of a book. And like all pearls, it was born of an irritation. As chair of the history department at the Catholic University of America, Jerry Muller found himself — and his school — devoting more and more precious time and resources to performance measurement and reporting.”

From Gabriel Perna: The Industries That Overly Rely On Performance Metrics

“More from Jerry Z. Muller, author of the The Tyranny of Metrics as well as a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., on why fixating on metrics is misguided.”

Wally’s Comment: This is the second of two articles in the same publication about the book. I linked to it because it contains like to the first part of the interview.

From the London School of Economics: Leading Professionals: Power, Politics and Prima Donnas

“Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book offers insights on how organisations cope with internal politics – reviewed by M Kerem Coban.”

From Bill Gates: Lifelong learners will appreciate this book about the history of everything

“We all have an origin story. In some societies, they manifest as creation myths. In others, they look more like history textbooks. For example, as a kid in the United States, I grew up learning about the group of rebels who stood up to their British overlords and founded our country. It’s human nature to be curious about where we come from, and origin stories unite people through a common history and shared sense of purpose. But what if all of humanity shared an origin story? What would that story look like? Historian David Christian tries to answer those questions in his new book Origin Story.”

From Michael McKinney: The Journey to Servant Leadership

“In The Art of Servant Leadership II, Barter shares the journey from power-based leadership to servant leadership. Inside you will find the ups and downs, the trials and triumphs, and the rewards of making the journey. What worked and what didn’t.”

Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Check out my Three Star Leadership blog, Michael McKinney’s LeadingBlog, and Skip Prichard’s Leadership Insights.