Books I often recommend
Everybody Lies Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
The author (an economist and former Google data scientist) investigates how internet search data might be the most important dataset ever collected, since it allows us a glimpse to true human behaviors not biased with lies. If you have ever done any market research, you will know that what people say they do is not actually what they do. Internet searches, however, provide real view of the world – almost like a behavior after a truth serum. The book investigates how this data can be used to change our society and culture.
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Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Daniel H. Pink
The author draws on scientific research on human motivation and business experiences since industrial revolution to demonstrate what motivation should look like in a business world in 21st century. The three elements of true motivation according to him are (i) autonomy (the desire to stay in control of our own lives), (ii) mastery (need to get better at a chosen skill) and; (iii) purpose (serve a bigger / more important goal). This is a must read for anyone in HR.
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So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Why Skills Trump Passion Cal Newport
Advice to “follow your passion” is handed out more and more often, esp. to people starting their career. Author debunks it as dangerous (“do what Steve Jobs did, not what he said”), instead asking to build career capital and strategically use it to build work context in which you thrive. As someone whose motto is “chipping away works”, I found myself nodding along a lot to author’s findings…
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Think Like A Freak Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
A third book from the Freakonomics franchise. Still very entertaining (esp. if you are a data geek).
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Pre-suasion Robert Cialdini
Not per-suasion. Pre-suasion. The whole book is essentially about how priming, i.e. doing something before (pre-) a given event, can influence the outcomes and persuade people better. It’s a must-read if you are a marketer.
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Grit Angela Duckworth
If you think that talent leads to success, you are likely wrong. The author very vividly argues that effort / perseverance is geometrically more important to success than talent. Great book, whether you are looking to apply it to yourself, or your kids.
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The Phoenix Project Gene Kim, George Spafford, Kevin Behr
This is the book that I am 99% sure was inspired by THE GOAL (also on my list). Similarly, it is written as a novel, but covers technical topics in a manner digestible by anyone. If you have seen dysfunctional IT organisations in action, you will understand the reasons behind much better after reading this book. It is a must-read for anyone in the upper management of any company.
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Born To Run Bruce Springsteen
This is the best autobiography I have read to EVER. And I think it will keep that title for a long time. The Boss’s prose is as poetic as lyrics of his songs, and the fact that he narrated the audiobook himself makes it even better. It is a very honest and deeply reflective description of a man who has started with a little, has been through a lot, but made it not because of his talent, but because of his work ethics and perseverance.
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Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t Simon Sinek
I have seen Simon Sinek talks on YouTube, and it was this book (and the interviews he has done around the time of launch) that got my attention, not the material covering his first book “Start With Why”. In this book Sinek covers biological rationale why we behave the way we do, discussing not only the influences of substances in our brain (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins) on our lives, but also how the changes in the society affected them. This is an extremely important book that every person with any managerial expectations should read.
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Mark Manson
This book reminded me of one of my favorites “Obstacle Is The Way” – it is just written in a much more entertaining / tongue in cheek way. I know this is a book I will come back to over and over again. It is very very high my list of recommendations
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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Scott Adams
A really entertaining, but insightful account of life of Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. I would describe his approach to life as “applied stoicism”. It is part self-help book, part autobiography and part career advice.
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Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Arnold Schwarzenegger
This is Arnie’s autobiography – I found it very entertaining and honest. Yes, the guy’s values might be questioned (given he fathered a child, and didn’t let his wife know for 10 years), but there is a lot of value in learning his life story of big goal setting and hard work.
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Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World Adam Grant
Reading now. So far, so good.
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18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done Peter Bregman
“You can get anything done, but you can’t get everything done”. If you find yourself being busy the whole day, and yet arriving home late at night knowing you haven’t done everything that you were supposed to that day, this is a book for you. Similarly to ESSENTIALISM it centres on the importance of focus, and is full of entertaining anecdotes, but is probably a bit more actionable (and also written in a tad different style).
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The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene
The book at the first glance seems like a manual of “what to do to have more power” because of the way in which the narrative is structured. In reality, it’s more of a history book, with stories and anecdotes structured along 48 pieces of advice (each describing how following it may result in some form of success). Very entertaining read, containing a lot of solid points. Treat the “how to become more powerful” angle with a pinch of salt though…
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Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values Fred Kofman
Fred Kofman is an ex accounting professor at MIT, and now a trusted coach to leaders of organisations across the globe, incl. some of the highest performing tech companies in the Valley. I first made aware of his work by an interview with Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. Kofman describes what it takes to build a value driven business, and gives enough advice to build an implementation plan. I think this book is a must-read for all leaders in any type of organisation.
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The Undoing Project Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors, and given my excitement for behavioral economics I couldn’t ask for a better book. The book investigates a relationship between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman – two friends who were godfathers of the discipline of behavioral economics (despite being psychologists themselves). Great content coverage if you want a primer into the subject, coupled with a story of a two friends – and human behavior between them…
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The Industries of the Future Alec Ross
I feel passionate about thinking about what the future will bring – Harris Partners was created as a way to help our clients bring advances of technology, data and behavioral science to their daily operations. This book pushes the thinking about what the next big thing is going to be in the next 10-20 years (spoiler alert: it will be about robotics, cybersecurity, genomics, big data, and the digitization of currency and trust). My job seems cooler by the day!
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The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work Scott Berkun
We ran into problems at Harris Partners hiring top tech talent in Sydney, so as a solution we started working with people across the globe. We now have a truly distributed workforce – Serbia, New Zealand, Mexico, Los Angeles among others. This book made me think harder about the challenges that we will run into when we scale this model further. The ability to hire great people (if you know how) is just too much of an incentive not to try it…
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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead Laszlo Bock
If there is one book that I would advise HR professionals to read, it would be this one. If you liked HOW GOOGLE WORKS, you will find this book to give much more detailed and actionable advice about how to build and sustain great organisational culture (with great majority of that advice – but not all – based on Google examples).
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Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
This is one of the books for which to benefit from it you need to stomach 10% of the cheesiness making it up (I guess it is a matter of taste…). But if you focus on the real messages, you will find them super useful, especially if you are aspiring to run an effective team (and will take any advice from any angle to make this goal happen!).
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Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard Chip Heath, Dan Heath
This book, recommended to me by my friend Michael Woodbury (a transformation guru at Bain & Company, and generally a legend), is probably the best book I have read on the topic of change – not only organisational, but also personal. It is written in an extremely approachable way, combining lots of anecdotes from across decades with scientific research. If you ever relied on being rational to convince someone to do something (have you ever been a consultant?), and failed, this book will explain to you why.
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How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie
Cheesy title should not take away from how powerful and relevant this book is, despite being published in 1937. If you ever thought that your EQ might not be as high as you (or people interacting with you!) would want, start with this book. The mantra is “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain” – we could all use that advice a little more often (some of us, ehm, more often than others).
[Amazon reviews: 4.7/5.0 across 5,613 reviews]
The Willpower Instinct Kelly McGonigal
This book could have been recommended by my academic wife – but it wasn’t. It combines insights from science of psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to give insights what to do (and not to do) to start exercising, stop procrastinating, quit smoking, and all other things that you were planning to do, but somehow decided not to. Pretty scientific approach to becoming a better version of yourself.
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The Innovators Walter Isaacson
If you are geek like me, you will love the history of digital revolution – all the way back from 19th century! The book was written by the same guy who wrote Steve Jobs’ biography, and it is written in a very similar style. A surprising fact that you can tell to your daughter to encourage them to become engineers – first software programmers were mostly women… Entertaining read!
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Deep Work Cal Newport
If you check your email, Facebook, Twitter more than 3 times a day (yes, three times a day), chances are you are ruining your efficiency by playing into the current social narrative of prioritising what is urgent / recent over what is important / deeply valuable. The author gives an extremely convincing argument why we should do more of deep work – prolonged periods of time where we focus our attention on one meaningful task. If you ever locked yourself in a conference room to get some stuff done instead of sitting in your open space, then you know that he is right.
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Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Greg McKeown
“Less, but better”. The author explores hypothesis that you will be more successful in life by figuring out what is it that you want to do, and then doing that in a thoughtful manner, picking the most important and powerful ways to achieve it, rather than going at it from a thousand different angles. The convincingly argues that the achievements come from saying “no” – after all, while “you can do anything, but not everything”
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Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence Laurence Steinberg
This book is important to me not only as as a father of two kids that are about to enter the age of adolescence, but also as a husband of a neuroeconomist who researches decision making using economic models and neurobiology toolkit (finally a book about her field of work that I can actually understand…).
The book covers the latest scientific research into why adolescents behave the way they do. It is incredibly thoughtfully written, with the science made approachable and interesting, but without compromising its integrity. It is clearly a MUST-READ for anyone with kids.
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Ego Is The Enemy Ryan Holiday
“While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer, almost irrational force, I’ve found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition.” —from the prologue.
Another book from the author of “The Obstacle Is The Way”. It’s a book that draws attention to features of character I believe we should all aspire to have.
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Creativity, Inc. Ed Catmull
The book is about building high performing cultures – a topic that I am madly passionate about. The extra bonus comes from the fact that it is told by someone who has created it twice – first for Pixar, then for Disney animations (when Pixar merged with Disney). Read this book if you want to create a great team
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10% Happier Dan Harris
This is a sceptic’s guide to discovering mindfulness. If you believe there is science to how our mind works, then this is a book for you. PS. The alternative title the author mentions in the very beginning of the book is “The Voice In My Head Is An Asshole”
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Winning the Story Wars Jonah Sachs
Another book about power of the storytelling, this time from a perspective of someone younger and more familiar with social media (although the book goes back through history showing different stories and their power in shaping entire industries and countries)
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Tell to Win Peter Guber
I do not like the title of this book, but otherwise it is GREAT. Human brain is wired for storytelling – convincing someone with numbers or PPT slides is a recent development, but everyone understands the power of the story. Mindblowing.
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The Obstacle Is The Way Ryan Holiday
The subtitle says it all – “The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph”. The author discusses how the ideas developed 2000 years ago in ancient Greece by stoics are applicable in today’s world. Sounds corny, but it’s not. One of the best books I consumed in the last months (again – as an audiobook)
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The War of Art Steven Pressfield
Premise of the book is that we all have potential that we do not fulfill, and what is stopping us from achieving it is RESISTANCE. Or as I would call it – excuses. An incredible book that should be a must-read for absolutely everyone: not only creatives, but also any business people.
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How Google Works Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg
If you are after a textbook of Silicon Valley, this is it. Great advice both for startups, and big corporates. I listened to the audiobook
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Scrum: A revolutionary approach to building teams, beating deadlines and boosting productivity Jeff Sutherland
The title might sound a bit new age, but (in the word of the author): “Do you really want to suck forever? Is that what your motivation is in life? Because it’s a choice, you know – you don’t have to be that way”. It’s an incredible read for leaders who are sick and tired of people making excuses why they cannot be an ultra high performing team, regardless of company size.
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Bloomberg by Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg
Mixed feelings about this book – the first half covering the mindset, Salomon Brothers and early days of Bloomberg is spectacular, the Bloomberg inner workings less so (but still not bad). It’s a must read if you are building an agile piece of B2B software!
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The Everything Store Brad Stone
Go big or go home
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Open Andre Agassi
Autobiography of one of my childhood heroes. Another proof that winning is a mindset
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Flash Boys Michael Lewis
If you ever thought that the trading game was rigged against the small guy – you were probably right. This is Michael Lewis at his best
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The Big Short Michael Lewis
After reading this book, you will be amazed that more people did not end up in jail in the US after the sub-prime crisis around 2009…
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Boomerang Michael Lewis
Do not speak another word about the Greek debt crisis without reading this book. Together with The Big Short and Flash Boys, it describes how big can be effects of greed and lack of regulation
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Zero to One Peter Thiel
This is one of the best perspectives on building new things: it provides great balance of challenging ideas and observations organised in thoughtful frameworks
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz
This might have been written for CEOs of tech companies in mind, but at least half of the lessons are applicable to any CEO or executive (and Heads of HR should read it too!)
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The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell
If you are a CMO launching a new product and you haven’t read this book, you are leaving money on the table
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Built to Last Jim Collins
This was a defining book when I was deciding what type of company I would like to build. You will see a lot of the lessons from this book working at Harris Partners
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Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely
If you ever wondered about what behavioral economics is, then this books provides an easy to read, yet powerful introduction that is packed with experiments from author’s papers and beyond. Dan is an entertaining speaker too, so you may want to check out his TED talks on YouTube before you make a commitment to read his book (but as in most situations – the book is better…)
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How We Decide Jonah Lehrer
As a husband of a professor of behavioural economics and neuroeconomics, I enjoyed this summary of the research in the field written in an approachable manner
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The Art of Possibility Benjamin Zander
One of the difficult things that many people struggle in life is having a BIG vision – whether for themselves, their project or their capabilities. This books, written by the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Benjamin Zander, sparks very tangible ideas to make it happen. Ability to change someone’s attitude is not an easy task, so the book has to be recommended for making it happen for so many people (myself included, since I read it in 2011)
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Scoring Points: How Tesco Continues to Win Customer Loyalty Clive Humby
The best book about loyalty programs and data-driven marketing out there. From the humble beginnings in 1987 to the most successful retail loyalty program globally (before being challenged by Amazon Prime). If you are a marketer, you have to read it
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Siblings Without Rivalry Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish
My wife made me read this book when she became pregnant with our second one, and before we told our first born she will have a brother. If you have small children, this book will change lives of your entire family. I used to re-read it every two years to make sure I am doing my bit to help relationship between my kids grow into a special one. Results: so far, so good (touch wood).
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Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini
I completely forgot how often I recommend this book, but when I realised that I recommended it twice this week, I had to add it to the list. Cialdini puts together a thoughtful and structured list of influencing principles, and lists many academic studies and anecdotes to support them. If you only can buy one book about human behavior, this would be one of the top choices.
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Freakonomics Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
This book is a fusion of economics, statistics, common sense and investigative journalism. Authors explain human motivations using those methods in a very entertaining manner.
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The Goal Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Every MBA student in the world knows the book as the Operations 101 book. It is written as a novel, but gives you an in-depth lesson on the Theory of Constraints in the process.
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