Leaders are readers. Reading helps you discover ideas to try and expand your mental models. In this post, I point you to reviews of recent business books. You’ll find pointers to reviews of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company, Change from the Inside Out: Making You, Your Team, and Your Organization Change-Capable, The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, and Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. Plus, there’s Michael McKinney’s monthly review of business books scheduled for release this month.

From the Next Big Idea Club: Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company

“Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She was an award-winning equity analyst on Wall Street and co-founder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard’s Clayton Christensen. Her writing and podcast focus on innovation and disruption theory, and her latest book takes a deeper dive into post-traumatic growth. Below, Whitney shares 5 key insights from her new book, Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company.”

From Skip Prichard: How to Make Your Team Change-Capable

“In Change From the Inside Out, Erika Andersen tackles the issue of change, why it’s avoided, and a five-step model for addressing it. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a coaching, consulting and training firm that centers on leader readiness and the author of many books on strategy and leadership.”

From McKinsey & Company: Author Talks: Rich Diviney says attributes–not skills–determine whether you ‘cut it’ or not

“In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey’s Vanessa Burke chats with Rich Diviney about his book, The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance (Random House, January 2021). A retired Navy SEAL commander, Diviney dives into how we can—and should—assess and develop our own attributes, equipping ourselves for optimal performance within our lives and throughout our careers. An edited version of the conversation follows.”

From strategy+business: To err is human, to regret, divine

“In his new book, The Power of Regret, best-selling author Daniel Pink makes a case that regret can serve as a compass for better decision-making.”

From the Economist: Stewart Brand’s belief in technology helped shape Silicon Valley

“Only one person may be able to claim credit for the popularity of both the Grateful Dead and space colonisation: Stewart Brand. He is best known as the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (pictured below), a compendium of tools that listed everything from compost machines to geometry books. Part do-it-yourself guide, part techno-Utopian journal, the periodical was considered essential reading by Americans who wanted to live more sustainably in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of its once-radical ideas, such as using solar panels, are mainstream today. In 2005 Steve Jobs, the late boss of Apple, called Mr Brand’s catalogue ‘one of the bibles of my generation.’ In a new biography, John Markoff, a former technology writer at the New York Times, reveals that there is more to Mr Brand than the Catalog.”

Bonus: If you love having your brain stretched, I recommend Stewart Brand’s SALT Summaries, Condensed Ideas About Long-term Thinking

From Michael McKinney: First Look: Leadership Books for July 2022

“HERE’S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in July 2022. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.”

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 other reading-related posts.