“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami
"Each employee is required to read one recommended book per year.” Here is what Chinese business tycoon Wang Jianlin, who leads the Dalian Wanda Group, asks his entire staff to do (The ‘Read One Book Per Year’ requirement is part of the company’s official mission statement).
One of the things I really got to understand throughout 2014 is that fresh ideas, actionable insights, and imaginative solutions to a range of pressing challenges face current and future leaders of Africa.
I will like to leave you with some of the most inspirational books that business leaders from around the world have managed to read and recommend for your intellectual stimulation.
For this publication, I like to start out with a book that has really inspired my mind around creativity and innovation development, especially for emerging markets like Africa.
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin. The book deals with integrative thinking that is much needed by professionals, future leaders and current leaders of today. It’s a new dimension that intrigued me when the CEO of LEGO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp introduced the book as one of his reads in 2014.
CREATIVE LEADERSHIP BOOK OF THE YEAR
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration – Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace,
Catmull, co-founder and President of Pixar Animation Studios, one of the world’s most admired creative businesses, shares insights and profitable techniques for harnessing talent, using teams and structuring organizations to produce unique and original creative work.
A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
Earlier this year I wrote an article that spoke to the content of this book indirectly. Remember don’t ask your kids what they learnt at school for the day. Instead ask them if they asked a good question. Most people believe great leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and activists are distinguished by their ability to give compelling answers. This assumption is shattered, proving that asking the right question make the real difference.
The Promise of a Pencil by Adam Braun
With an Ivy League degree and a coveted consulting job at Bain, and a gaping hole where passion ought to fit in, Adam Braun’s knew something was amiss. With age (24) and $25, he started Fast-forward five years, and Pencils of Promise, since then building more than 200 schools worldwide.
Business Adventures by John Brooks. “Warren Buffett recommended this book to me back in 1991, and it’s still the best business book I’ve ever read. Even though Brooks wrote more than four decades ago, he offers sharp insights into timeless fundamentals of business, like the challenge of building a large organization, hiring people with the right skills, and listening to customers’ feedback.”
Stress Test by Timothy F. Geithner. (Another that I have read) The central irony of Stress Test is that a guy who was accused of being a lousy communicator as U.S. Treasury Secretary has penned a great book that details the juxtapose between business lie and family in some parts.
The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
In this multi-layered and wide-ranging meditation, the writer takes on the increasingly over-simplified notion of failure as a central driver of creative work. “The gift of failure is a riddle,’ concludes the art critic and curator, even suggesting in passing another term, ‘blankness,’ to emphasize the necessary dynamic, of those who persevere, of wiping clean provided by experience and then looking to what’s next.”
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
A must read for anyone considering managing themselves, not time, in different way. The book holds a set of instrumental keys to solving one of the great puzzles of life: how can we do less but accomplish more?
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Simply because I have a personal interest in lots of Chess and military strategy, this is a brilliant read for anyone moving in the strategic direction. Written more than two thousand years ago in China, it’s a cunning depiction of military strategies and operations of brilliantly executed manoeuvres in Asian warfare.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert.
It’s on everyone’s lips – Climate Change. It is a big problem. Humans are exerting massive amounts of pavement, displacing species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, removing ancient tribes from the only form of living they know – without learning the intricacies of human and nature – not to mention the remedies that exist and used by these tribes…..a fascinating read.
Books to read in 2015
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
By Laszlo Bock
“Heads of human resources typically aren’t known outside the companies where they work. Enter Laszlo Bock, The head of Google’s “People Operations,” Bock runs a department that’s been described as “more like a rigorous science lab than the pesky hall monitor most of us picture when we think of H.R.” The book clinically depicts what Bock learnt managing H.R. at one of the most generous — and also most data-driven — creative and innovative centres in the world.
A Curious Mind, By Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman
By Brian Grazer, the producer behind “Apollo 13,” “Arrested Development” and “A Beautiful Mind,” scheduled weekly “curiosity conversations” with outstanding achievers he doesn’t know: scientists, spies, CEOs and anyone else who sparks his interest and is willing to spend a few hours with him. Certainly for the inquisitive mind.
Their Own Sweet Time: How Successful Women Build Lives That Work , by Laura Vanderkam
How does she do it – at all? This book endeavours to answer that perpetual question, examining how highly paid professional women manage themselves hours Laura Vanderkam explores the “time-logs” from 1001 days by these women unpacking the vault of time management by successful women.
Resilience by Zolli and Healy
Recommend for anyone interested in Social Innovation dealing with the implications of system failure that remain inevitable.
Keeping up with the Quants, by Davenport and Kim
A definite read for the CIO and CTO. A firm grasp to data mining and quantitative analyses for non-mathematicians.
We do hope that 2015 will usher in a new reader and so, a new leader!
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