I’ve always believed that the right book, at the right moment, can do more than inform. It can rewire how you think. Over the years, a handful of titles have pushed me to reimagine leadership, challenge assumptions, and expand the boundaries of what business can mean.
Some of these books didn’t even come from the world of management. But they spoke to the deeper patterns that shape people, systems, and purpose.
Jim Collins’s Good to Great gave me my first real lesson in leadership. Not charisma. Not command. But quiet conviction. The best leaders are not loud. They are deeply committed to something beyond themselves. That changed how I show up as a CEO.
Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup made me rethink innovation from the ground up. Instead of long planning cycles, it taught me to test fast, fail smart, and learn quickly. At Ontik, that mindset helped us stay agile even while growing.
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow reminded me how often we get in our own way. Biases, shortcuts, overconfidence. They are all baked into how we think. This book didn’t just sharpen my decisions. It made me more patient with others’ thinking too.
Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline introduced me to systems thinking. It helped me see organizations like living ecosystems. Adaptive, interconnected, and vulnerable to the blind spots we ignore. That insight helped me build teams that learn, not just work.
Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics turned my idea of growth upside down. Instead of chasing numbers, she asked a deeper question. Are we thriving within our social and ecological boundaries? That still guides how we think about scale and impact.
Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations made me hopeful. It showed what is possible when you build companies around trust, purpose, and wholeness. Reading it felt like getting permission to rethink everything. How we hire, how we organize, how we lead.
Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens offered a wider lens. A sweeping reminder that everything we build, from companies to countries, rests on shared stories. Culture is not fluff. It is the invisible architecture that holds everything up.
These books did not hand me answers. They gave me frameworks. They gave me better language. They shifted my perspective. They helped me see that business is never just business. It is human. It is moral. It is systemic. It is fragile and powerful at the same time.
In a world moving this fast, reading remains the slowest and most powerful way to evolve.