15 New Business Books Leaders Should Be Reading

As a member of the literary community, I have the privilege of spotlighting the outstanding work of a number of great authors.  Recently, a plethora of outstanding books from the business world have been published.  I want to make you aware of them and allow you the chance to purchase copies for you and your team.

My newest book is also now available for pre-order!!! Releasing March 21st!!  Get copies for your entire team today!!!

Whether you are in the business, athletic, non-profit or Christian communities, these resources will make you a better leader.

The following are 15 New Business Books Leaders Should Be Reading in alphabetical order by author except for this one:

• Inspired Every Day: Three Indispensable Ingredients to Connect With Your Passion by Kevin Paul Scott – The word inspiration can sound, well, less than substantial, but it’s much more than a momentary flash of enthusiasm or an isolated brilliant idea. The genius of a flashbulb moment happens much more often when a person has developed a lifestyle that blends three indispensable ingredients: a purpose to live for, a problem to tackle, and a partnership with likeminded people. One or two won’t do. It takes all three. Living inspired every day isn’t limited to certain personality types. Everyone can cultivate an inner fire that ignites creativity, instills lasting determination, and brings more fulfillment than we ever thought possible. In this book, Kevin Paul Scott is both engineer and coach: he carefully explains the interwoven elements of an inspired life and he encourages us in our pursuit.
• The Ecosystem Economy: How to Lead in the New Age of Sectors Without Borders by Venkat Atluri and Miklós Dietz – In The Ecosystem Economy: How to Lead in the New Age of Sectors Without Borders, two McKinsey & Company senior partners offer an incisive and eye-opening look at the emerging ecosystem economy and what it means for companies used to familiar sector siloes. In the book, you’ll explore how the most successful companies in the new economy aren’t the ones that have applied old-school best practices but, instead, have adopted entirely new mindsets and approaches for a fundamentally transforming market.
• The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work and Thrive in the Next Decade by Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason – For the past decade, Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason have been on the front lines of exploring the global forces shaping our future normal through their work independently leading two of the most successful trend consultancies in the world: TrendWatching and the Non-Obvious Company.  From donning full body haptic suits to sampling cultivated meat, their work has taken them into cutting-edge labs, private testing facilities, and invite-only showcases across the world. Now for the first time, they are teaming up to share a uniquely eye-opening vision of the future unlike any other.
• True North: Emerging Leader Edition by Bill George and Zach Clayton – In True North: Emerging Leaders Edition, renowned leadership expert Bill George and Millennial tech entrepreneur Zach Clayton issue the challenge to emerging leaders―from Gen X to Millennials and Gen Z―to lead their organizations authentically through never-ending crises to make this world a better place for everyone.  Emerging leaders do so by discovering their “True North”―who they are―and then finding their “North Star”―their leadership purpose. To navigate today’s complexities, George and Clayton show emerging leaders how to lead with their hearts, not just their heads, with passion, compassion, and moral courage by being true to their values to reach their full potential as they take on great challenges and navigate complex issues.
• Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It by Jon Clifton – The rising unhappiness that leaders didn’t see.  That’s because while leaders pay close attention to measures like GDP or unemployment, almost none of them track their citizens’ wellbeing.  The implications of this blind spot are significant and far-reaching — leaders missed the citizen unhappiness that triggered events ranging from the Arab uprisings to Brexit to the election of Donald Trump.  What are they going to miss next?  Grounded in Gallup’s global research, Blind Spot makes the urgent case that leaders should measure and quantify wellbeing and happiness — how citizens’ lives are going — and shows them how. It also discusses the five key elements of a great life and where the world needs to improve in each of them to better the lives of people everywhere.
• HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture (with bonus article “How to Build a Culture of Originality” by Adam Grant) – You can change your company’s culture.  Organizational culture often feels like something that has a life of its own. But leaders are the stewards of a company’s culture and have the power to shape and even change it.  If you read nothing else on building a better organizational culture, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you identify where your culture can be improved, communicate change, and anticipate and address implementation challenges.
• Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential by Matt Higgins – Executive fellow at Harvard Business School, Guest Shark on Shark Tank, and famed angel investor Matt Higgins reveals the counterintuitive formula for a life of perpetual growth that has been practiced for thousands of years by military leaders and serial entrepreneurs alike—forget the Plan B and burn the boats.  From Sun Tzu to Julius Caesar, the ancient Israelites to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, there’s a bold and highly effective tactic seen throughout history—when leaders want to motivate their troops for success, they destroy all opportunities for retreat, and go all-in on the mission. They burn their boats; it’s win or perish, and the clarity of sheer desperation propels them to victory. Serial entrepreneur, brilliant investor, and television personality Matt Higgins makes the case that burning the boats isn’t just advantageous in times of war or crisis, but a strategy we can all use to achieve our greatest dreams. Conquerors don’t have a Plan B, knowing intuitively what science bears out: the mere contemplation of a Plan B weakens our resolve and diminishes our chances for breakout success.
• Reel Leadership: Discovering The Hidden Leadership Lessons In Movies by Joseph Lalonde – Movies are not a waste of time if you’re intentional about watching the movie you’re viewing.  Reel Leadership speaks to leaders and movie lovers who want to look at leadership and personal development in a new way. Author Joseph Lalonde wants leaders to enjoy entertainment without feeling guilty.  When he began his own personal development journey, Lalonde discovered how leadership gurus try to dissuade people from enjoying regular forms of entertainment because they see it as a waste of time. He fell in line and believed this lie; that entertainment, especially movies, held no real value. Over time, he realized each movie provides a story with a moral premise or leadership lesson.
• Unlock Your Potential: The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World by Jeff Lerner – Today, 54% of college graduates regret choosing to invest in a degree, over 70% of Americans detest their jobs (part of why they change jobs every 20 months on average), and 2 out of 3 of Americans will never be able to stop working and retire.  But what are we supposed to do? Is there an alternative to the “system of systems” we live in: school, college (debt), job, different job, more different jobs, 401K/pension, retire (hopefully but probably not)? And if there is an alternative can it really work for everyone regardless of where they currently are in the system? Is there something else out there that works equally well for the 18-year-old deciding whether or not to go to college, the 45-year-old questioning his/her career path, the 65-year-old who is way short of being able to retire, and anyone else feeling dazed and confused in the modern world?  In Unlock Your Potential, author and entrepreneur Jeff Lerner answers those questions with a resounding YES! He shows readers how the failings of our education, employment, and retirement systems have opened doors most people didn’t even know exist. And, most important, he’ll show YOU how to step through those doors—where they exist, how they work, what it takes to go through them, and what’s on the other side.
• Culture Is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence by Matt Mayberry – In Culture Is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence, former NFL Pro, world-renowned keynote speaker, and management consultant Matt Mayberry delivers an incisive and hands-on blueprint to employee engagement and peak productivity. In the book, you’ll explore how leaders, at every level, can build a workplace culture that drives organizational excellence and unleashes the full potential of every employee.
• When Everyone Leads: How The Toughest Challenges Get Seen And Solved by Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride – This book is not about leadership, at least in the way we normally think about it.  Leadership is not about position, or authority.  It’s not about big speeches or grand visions.  Leadership is engaging others to solve daunting challenges. Those challenges appear in our professional lives, in our communities, our families―and they seem unsolvable, beyond our ability to see what needs to be done or outside our capacity to make the changes needed.  They are not.  Because, leadership is an activity―small actions taken in moments of opportunity. And as you start to look around, you can begin to see more of those moments, seize the opportunity in those moments. Most importantly, you can help others see those opportunities too.  That’s why everyone can lead and the real power to solve our most important challenges is when everyone leads.
• Real- Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High by David Noble and Carol Kauffman – The hardest part of leadership is mastering the inevitable high-risk, high-stakes challenges you will face. Whether you’re making a split-second decision when your business is knocked sideways or you’re finding the best strategy to navigate business-critical long-term circumstances, how can you be in peak form in those most crucial moments?  Leadership coaching legends David Noble and Carol Kauffman show you how with their innovative new framework—MOVE—which equips you with the tactics you need to slow down high-stakes situations before they speed you up. You’ll learn to master the moment, generate response options, and quickly evaluate those options before acting. As you get better and better at using the framework, you’ll find you can recognize these moments as they arrive, like a great athlete who can read the field as a play unfolds or a great conductor who anticipates what’s needed to deliver a great performance.
• 7 Rules of Power: Surprising–but True–Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career by Jeffrey Pfeffer – Is power the last dirty secret or the secret to success? Both. While power carries some negative connotations, power is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Don’t blame the tool for how some people used it.  If fully understood and harnessed effectively, power skills and understanding become the keys to increasing salaries, job satisfaction, career advancement, organizational change, and, happiness. In 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, provides the insights that have made both his online and on-campus classes incredibly popular—with life-changing results often achieved in 8 or 10 weeks.
• The Four Workarounds: Strategies from the World’s Scrappiest Organizations for Tackling Complex Problems by Paulo Savaget – For ages, global corporations have been lecturing small organizations and not-for-profits on how to get things done. As it turns out, it should have been the other way around. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget shows how the most valuable lessons about problem-solving can be learned from the scrappiest groups.  Savaget draws most of his examples from small organizations dedicated to social action that have made an art form out of subverting the status quo and have proved themselves adept at achieving massive wins with minimal resources. Through his research, Savaget identified the four workarounds that these groups commonly employ: the piggyback, the loophole, the roundabout, and the next best. With vivid and fascinating examples from his life and travels, he demonstrates how each one works and how to know which one to use when.
• Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work by Nick Sonnenberg – “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done!” Sound familiar? Forget the old concepts of time management and the hustle culture of working until you burn out. You and your entire team can get more done, in far fewer hours, with the right blueprint. Come Up for Air is that blueprint.  Through years of building a leading efficiency consulting business, Nick Sonnenberg has discovered the primary reason why so many teams are overwhelmed. It’s not because they don’t have enough time, managers expect too much of their employees, or there aren’t enough people. The problem is that everyone is drowning in unnecessary work and inefficiencies that prevent them from focusing on the work that drives results.

That is my current reading list of business books.  What other great books are you currently reading?

#CommissionsEarned

Also, my latest book Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress is available for purchase.  Production. Passion. Resilience. Teamwork. Contentment. Courage. Faith. These seven skills were embodied over three thousand years ago by a group of elite warriors known as David’s Mighty Men. These highly-capable individuals helped take David, the man who had previously defeated Goliath, from a wilderness experience to leading a nation. Did 2020 feel like a wilderness experience for you? So many people lost loved ones, opportunities, financial resources, careers, time, and much, much more during COVID. The worst thing many people lost was hope. COVID stripped away the non-essentials in our lives. It revealed how foolish pride, ego, and narcissism are. It made us question almost everything in our lives, including God himself. COVID brought us all to our knees in one form or fashion. I want you to know the same skills used by David’s’ Mighty Men still work today. In my new book Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress, I show you how applying these skills can help you become Mighty and move from the Pandemic to Progress.  Click HERE or on the image provided to order!