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 What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader, All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success, Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time, Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success, and Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. Plus, Judy Sims’s list of five books that will change the way you lead forever.

From the London Business School: Work what is it good for

“We will never completely understand people and organisations if we don’t first understand why we work, say the LBS authors of a new book.”

From Scott Eblin: All You Have to Do is Ask. Here’s How

“‘Asking for help is often the one simple act standing between us and success.’ That’s a quote from Dr. Wayne Baker in his new book, All You Have to Do is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success. Wayne is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and an expert on building and strengthening connections. When I read his book, I found myself nodding my head a lot because his research and experience support the basic ideas I teach about effective networking. Wayne goes way, way deeper on them.”

From Sean Silverthorne: Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

“in a new book, Rosabeth Moss Kanter encourages leaders to ‘think outside the building’ to overcome establishment paralysis and generate powerful innovation.”

From Michael McKinney: 8 Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success

“LEADERSHIP, says John Eades, is ‘inspiring, empowering, and service in order to elevate others over an extended period of time.’ In Building the Best he tells how to do just that. To that end he presents 8 practical principles you can use to elevate others.”

From the Harvard Business Review: At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure

“Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke discusses how past experience and intuition can be misleading when attempting to launch an innovative new product, service, business model, or process in his case Booking.com (co-author: Daniela Beyersdorfer) and his new book, Experimentation Works. Instead, Booking.com and other innovative firms embrace a culture where testing, experimentation, and even failure are at the heart of what they do.”

From Judy Sims: 5 Books That Will Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Here are the five leadership books that have influenced me the most, both as a coach and as a person who runs her own business. Without them, I can honestly say I’d not only be a different person, but also not nearly so good at what I do.”

Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Monday is “Book Day.” Come back for book reviews. reading lists. and the podcast “Leadership and Management Book Talk” where Art Petty and I chat about books we like and some we don’t.