I tend to reference quite a few books in my travels/workshops/conversations, so I’ve put this page together to provide a list of the (non-fiction) books that I’ve found most useful in informing my (work) view on the world. My first recommendation (and possibly a way to short-cut the whole process) is to read my two books: Building the Agile Business, and Agile Transformation (see what I did there). But assuming you’ve already read those, here’s a longer list of favourites that I’ve each taken something from (links are to Amazon UK):
Organisational Change, Culture and Agility:
The Joy of Work by Bruce Daisley
Drive by Dan Pink
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do by Dan Cable
The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther MacGrath
Work Rules by Laszlo Bock
Leading Change by John Kotter
Accelerate by John Kotter
Scrum: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Teams, Beating Deadlines and Boosting Productivity by Jeff Sutherland
How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
Give and Take by Adam Grant
Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy by Amy Edmondson
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future by Charles Handy
The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile
Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future by Blake Masters, Peter Thiel
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clay Christensen
How Will You Measure Your Life Clay Christensen
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
The Startup Way by Eric Ries
An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide by Michael Sahota
Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek
Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs by Walters, Pikkel, Quin, Keeley
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder
Psychology
Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together by Ian Leslie
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Sunstein and Thaler
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams
Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Taleb
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Obliquity: Why Our Goals are Best Achieved Indirectly by John Kay
Marketing and Advertising:
How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp
The Anatomy of Humbug: How to Think Differently About Advertising by Paul Feldwick
Paid Attention by Faris Yakob
Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature by Mark Earls
I’ll Have What She’s Having: Mapping Social Behaviour by Mark Earls