Great books on Change & Leadership
So for a few days ago I asked my network and peers about the books they can recommend in the domain of change and leadership. This is what they told me, what an amazing list of great books. The list will be updated from time to time.
If you have any other good reads, just please let me know
Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design
The majority of companies, their employees and their leaders navigate a space where competitors appear overnight, customers demand innovations monthly, business plans rarely last a full year and career ladders have been replaced by trampolines. This environment of constant change will only accelerate in the future and traditional business leaders are ill equipped to deal with it. Just as we took our cues from MBAs and the military in casting the ideal CEO of the 20th century, we can look to design — in its broadest form — to model our future leader, the DEO. These leaders possess characteristics, behaviors and mindsets that allow them to excel in unpredictable, fast-moving and value-charged conditions. They are catalysts for transformation and agents of change. A hybrid of strategic business executive and creative problem-solver, the DEO is willing to take on anything as an object of design and looks at ALL problems as design challenges.Readers will learn not only why this form of leadership is essential to the success of modern organizations, but also what characteristics are best suited to this role. Through intimate conversations with leading DEOs, we explore the mindsets, communities, processes and practices common to creative business leaders.
Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
In this book, Tim Harford, shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. When faced with complex situations, we have all become accustomed to looking to our leaders to set out a plan of action and blaze a path to success. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinion; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must “adapt.”
Reinventing Organizations
The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation.
The pioneering organizations researched for this book have already “cracked the code.” Their founders have fundamentally questioned every aspect of management and have come up with entirely new organizational methods. Even though they operate in very different industries and geographies and did not know of each other’s experiments, the structures and practices they have developed are remarkably similar.
“Reinventing Organizations” describes in practical detail how organizations large and small can operate in this new paradigm. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.
Waste to Wealth: The Circular Economy Advantage
Waste to Wealth proves that ‘green’ and ‘growth’ need not be binary alternatives. The book examines five new business models that provide circular growth from deploying sustainable resources to the sharing economy before setting out what business leaders need to do to implement the models successfully.
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business
This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered “immeasurable,” including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI.
The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned From Patagonia’s First 40 Years
The Responsible Company, by Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, and Vincent Stanley, co-editor of its Footprint Chronicles, draw on the their 40 years’ experience at Patagonia — and knowledge of current efforts by other companies — to articulate the elements of responsible business for our time.
Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.
Drive
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money — the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink in Drive. He asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction — at work, at school, and at home — is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does-and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation — autonomy, mastery, and purpose — and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems — the rational mind and the emotional mind — that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort — but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.
Leadership Agility
Leadership Agility is the master competency needed for sustained success in today’s complex, fast-paced business environment. Illustrated with stories based on original research and decades of work with clients, this book identifies five levels that leaders move through in developing their agility. Significantly, only 10% have mastered the level of agility needed for consistent effectiveness in our turbulent era of global competition. It also provides practical advice and concrete examples that show managers and leadership development professionals how they can bring greater agility to the initiatives they take every day.
Scaling Teams: Strategies for Building Successful Teams and Organizations
Leading a fast-growing team is a uniquely challenging experience. If you re leading a startup or a new team between 10 and 150 people, this guide provides a practical approach to managing your way through these challenges. Each section covers essential strategies and tactics for managing growth, starting with a single team and exploring typical scaling points as the team grows in size and complexity.
The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life
Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It s the art of anticipating your opponent s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it.
The Power Of Simplicity: A Management Guide to Cutting Through the Nonsense and Doing Things Right
It’s high time for businesses to replace complexity with common sense, argues corporate guru Jack Trout in this impassioned yet practical guide. The best-selling coauthor of the classic “Positioning” shows managers how to banish jargon, articulate their vision, simplify processes, and refocus on core issues — all without expensive consultants or money-wasting programs. “The Power of Simplicity” throws a life jacket of reality to readers drowning in management fads and wondering why their business isn’t better. Trout and coauthor Steve Rivkin present guidelines for thinking in straightforward terms and cutting through ridiculous jargon. Marketing means turning simple ideas into strategy.
Liminal thinking
Why do some people succeed at change while others fail? It’s the way they think Liminal thinking is a way to create change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs. What beliefs are stopping you right now? You have a choice. You can create the world you want to live in, or live in a world created by others.
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result.
Even the best decision doesn’t yield the best outcome every time. There’s always an element of luck that you can’t control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?
By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don’t, you’ll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making.
Homo Deus
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century — from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers?
Man’s Search for Meaning
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
The Business Model Navigator: 55 Models That Will Revolutionise Your Business
A strong business model is the bedrock to business success. But all too often we fail to adapt, clinging to outdated models that are no longer delivering the results we need. The brains behind The Business Model Navigator have discovered that just 55 business models are responsible for 90% of the world’s most successful businesses. These 55 models — from the Add-On model used by Ryanair to the Subscription model used by Spotify — provide the blueprints you need to revolutionise your business and drive powerful change.
Amazon or Adlibris
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
In Originals Grant addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent.
Helping
Helping is a fundamental human activity, but it can also be a frustrating one. All too often our sincere offers of help are resented, resisted, or refused — and we often react the same way when people try to help us.
Braving wilderness
True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.” Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives — experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging.
Riv pyramiderna (swedish)
Jan Carlzon skapade som rekordung VD för Linjeflyg och SAS rubriker och rörde om ordentligt i den svenska företagsvärlden. Hans ledningsfilosofi satte kunden i centrum och betonade delaktighet och information som en väg till lönsamhet och vinst.
Att ta vara på medarbetarnas erfarenheter, bryta otympliga hierarkiska strukturer och ha tydliga strategiska mål Jan Carlzons råd är lika giltiga idag som när boken utkom för första gången på 1980-talet.
Ensam eller stark : åtta principer för framgångsrika team (swedish)
Vill du bota egoisterna i din omgivning, skapa en positiv arbetsmiljö eller rädda vår planet från kortsiktighet? Allt börjar med samarbete. Ensam eller stark är en konkret handbok med 101 forskningsbaserade träningstips för att skapa hållbara team och arbetsplatser. Med tydliggörande exempel från bland annat Super Mario, Sagan om ringen och Fortune 500-företag.
Thank you Sara Doltz, Pernilla Dahlman, Karin Hagren, Anna Rosenberg, Jenny Fossum, Max Lundgren, Lena Åckander, Simon Franz, Caroline Larsson, Dimitry Lebedev, Michael Åkerman, Anna Sandström, Sigrid Hellberg & Erik Starck for recommend some really nice books. I now have something to for a while…
