The Leadership Library

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:

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).

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.

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).

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).

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