The Leadership Library

“Not All Readers Are Leaders, but All Leaders Are Readers” — Harry S. Truman.

An employee recently approached me asking about useful books on management and leadership. It caused me to pause for a moment because I believe the discipline is too rich and context dependent to be put on formula or communicated fully in writing. In the end it’s a practice, not a study.

However, I decided to write this short piece anyways because I do believe reading can help you get smarter and more skilled in the discipline by:

• Developing “first principles” that serve as lodestars in your strategic and operational issue-resolution and decision-making
• Developing frames or categories by which to organize the vast amount of information you have to evaluate in your job
• Zeroing in on the highest order “questions to ask” to explore a new field, subject or problem.

In this post I lay out a) how I evaluate/choose management literature and b) what I consider essential reading for any aspiring manager (of anything).

i. Everything is a remix — choose the right ingredients

All management thinkers rest either explicitly or implicitly on some form of philosophical tradition(s). I evaluate all management literature on how consistent it is with an empiricist, pragmatist philosophical tradition as espoused by e.g. David Hume, Karl Popper etc.. Simply because I consider those ideas to be fundamental to the success of Western Civilization.

The most important take-away from these authors is that human knowledge is flawed and must be treated with caution. The world is complicated, you can only know for sure what you don’t know, and should proceed accordingly. That means e.g. “grand scheme” visionary (or “big bang”) thinkers would never be interesting to me, although I am sure some have been successful historically.

ii. Get out of the ivory tower

When I evaluate authors, I search for a mix of academic and practical experience. It means they are rigorous and serious, but not stuck in the ivory tower. Academic thinking alone tends to yield thoughts that are so disconnected that they can be almost useless. Good examples of this mix are Andy Grove (Ph.D. and later CEO) or Nassim Taleb (option trader, Ph.D. and later professor).

iii. Gauge the “Lindy Effect” to weed out the fads

Management thinking is unfortunately riddled with fads, most of them useless (in my opinion). So my second criterion for selecting books has to do with their timeless relevance.

The so-called “Lindy Effect” argues that the value of ideas increases proportionally with the age of the publication. Put simply, if a book has been in print for 40 years, it can be expected to be in print (or “relevant”) for at least another 40. The longer an idea has been relevant, the higher the likelihood it will remain so.

Hence, in the order of age, here are the 10 books I would recommend to anyone who wants to be smarter on “management” or “leadership” (with links to summaries).

1. “Individualism and Economic Order: The Use of Knowledge in Society” (Friedrich Hayek, 1948): This short essay is not really a ‘management theory’, but it lays out why planning and execution has to be decentralized to be successful. The tenets here are pivotal to some of the most fundamental building blocks of management - like delegation and accountability.
2. “The Practice of Management” (Peter F. Drucker, 1953): This study was groundbreaking when it was released. It laid the foundation for many of Drucker’s messages, such as “a business exists to create a customer” and “management is a creative rather than an adaptive task”. It also popularized the concept of MBO.
3. “Getting to Yes” (Roger Fisher, William Ury, 1981): This is the only book on the list that deals with the problem of negotiation. It’s one of the classics in the field. I refer to it because of its’ analytical, cooperative and partnership oriented approach to negotiation. It might not be the right approach for all negotiations, but for most business dealings it is.
4. “High Output Management” (Andrew S. Grove, 1983): This is arguably the most important book on this list. It is a primer on how to manage processes and teams, based upon his production management experience at Intel. Intel’s number one competitive advantage has always been execution, and they can thank Grove for that. The book’s approach is to view every activity in a business as a process with an output to be managed. It is rife with practical guidelines on how to obtain managerial leverage, how to run meetings effectively etc.
5. “The Pyramid Principle” (Barbara Minto, 1987): I give this book to (almost) all new employees. The message is that all ideas should be structured as a “pyramid” under a single thought. Particularly in my team (Finance, BizOps etc.) the form of logical, structured thinking and communication is essential to success. And I honestly believe it can improve productivity in every function.
6. “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy” (Richard P. Rumelt, 2011): This book struck a chord with me because of its’ focus on strategy as problem solving. The messages regarding the importance of problem definition, focus and simplicity are spot on.
7. “Thinking Fast and Slow” (Daniel Kahneman, 2011): I was introduced to this book when I did my MBA. At the time the author recently received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The book is both a fascinating study of the human mind and useful guide on how to use “slow” thinking to eliminate biases of the mind and take clearer, more logical decisions.
8. “Antifragile” (Nassim N. Taleb, 2012): Taleb outlines how organizations benefit who set themselves up to benefit from variation (or risk — particularly outlier events), instead of trying to eliminate it, win in the long run. It is a bit abstract and at times a bit too inspired by his life as an option trader, but it’s the only book I know of that espouses a general application of the concept of “optionality” to create stronger businesses.
9. “The Generals” (Thomas E. Ricks, 2013): This history book analyzes the management of the US Army from the WW2 foundation designed by George Marshall to the present. The thesis is that US military success rises and declines with a certain type of rational, consequential meritocratic leadership that reached its’ zenith in WW2 (“…in WW2, the firing of a general was seen as a sign the system was working”) . It’s a compelling description of good leadership values with ample historical examples.
10. “Great at Work” (Morten T. Hansen, 2018): A practical primer on how to work effectively as an individual, in teams and how to strike the work life balance. The work is based upon the author’s academic studies and his time at BCG. Some of the simple rules like “do less, then obsess” and “Passion & Purpose” align well with the lessons I have learned myself in my work life.