I’ve devoted my career to helping people achieve their potential and improve their wellbeing. One of the greatest challenges we’re all facing today is the highly unnatural world of work in which we all must perform. I’ve been fortunate both to lead large teams in this environment and to guide the Fortune 1000 on how to help their people thrive in its midst. Achieving sustainable peak performance requires that we understand what we are up against. This book list is a great place to start!
Kai-Fu Lee, once himself an AI pioneer, wrote AI Superpowers to help non-technical readers understand how and why AI is changing our world, with an emphasis on how it’s reshaping work. Lee breaks down which types of jobs are most vs. least likely to be replaced by AI, and offers wisdom on which skills it makes sense for all of us to lean into given those shifts. He also offers clear-eyed predictions about the potential for AI innovations to reshape global politics.
I enjoyed this book from page one. Lee’s prose is crisp and his points sharp. I appreciated his occasional meanderings into humanistic realms. This also feels like a personal book, given how much Lee himself has done to accelerate the AI revolution.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
"Kai-Fu Lee believes China will be the next tech-innovation superpower and in AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, he explains why. Taiwan-born Lee is perfectly positioned for the task."-New York Magazine
In this thought-provoking book, Lee argues powerfully that because of the unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come…
Colin is a French entrepreneur with expertise in the intersection of policy and tech. Hedge offers the most detailed vision I have seen for what the future of work could look like, fleshing out one particular future in which workers are separated into different classes based on how much direct service they provide other humans. Colin also offers a specific set of answers for the problems this will raise. Whether or not one agrees with his predictions or solutions the richness of the history and analysis he provides is invigorating and thought-provoking. This book makes clear just what is at stake for all of us in the coming decades, one way or another.
For three decades we’ve been living through a paradigm shift. Our world is moving from the fading Fordist age to the ever-strengthening digital age. This shift is as unstoppable as the one that once brought us from railroads and steel mills to Fordist factories. And its impact on our lives is just as radical.
In this context, the lessons from history are clear: Providing economic security for the many generates prosperity for all. But this can only be done with the right safety net supporting both households and businesses against the risks brought about by the digital age.
Avery Mann, a retired pharmaceuticals executive, is in crisis.
His wife dies of cancer, his son’s marriage is on the rocks, his grandson is having a meltdown, and his good friend is a victim of the robocalls scandal that invades the Canadian federal election. Throw in a reckless fling with…
Future Politics takes the conversation to the societal level, looking at how technology will change the fabric of our communities. Susskind brings an expert eye to a sweeping body of knowledge and resists simple narratives. This book is dense, but worth the effort for those looking to understand the dynamics that will shape society as we know it, for better and for worse.
Susskind is a scholar of history and politics and brings that love of fundamental political questions to this work. I enjoy how he anchors modern questions about the implications of technology for freedom, for example, in much older debates about freedom and the State.
Politics in the Twentieth Century was dominated by a single question: how much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society?
Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms?
Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these…
Quite a lot about what the defining forces in today’s world of work became clear to our military leaders many decades ago. Warfare was once centralized, linear, and choreographed. Modern war is fragmented, dynamic, and unpredictable. The term VUCA itself came from the military.
Scales is one of our greatest military thinkers leading the way on how we should be approaching soldier readiness in this new reality. We need to think much more about psychological agility and resilience so that the front lines are enabled to respond to an unforeseeable challenge. He’s ahead of the corporate curve in this thinking, but just by a hair.
Scales on War is a collection of ideas, concepts, and observations aboutcontemporary war taken from over thirty years of research, writing, andpersonal experience by retired Major General Bob Scales. Scales' unique styleof writing utilizes contemporary military history, current events, and hisphilosophy of ground warfare to create a very personal and expansive view ofthe future direction of American defense policies.
Each chapter in the book addresses a distinct topic facing the upcomingprospects of America's military, including tactical ground warfare, future gazing,the draft, and the role of women in the infantry. Fusing all of these topicstogether is Scales' belief that, throughout its…
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for…
Susan David coined the term emotional agility to help crystallize the importance in today’s world of emotional regulation and the cognitive agility it affords. In the face of constant change, being able to learn from – but not be held hostage by – our emotions affords us a competitive advantage and will advance our well-being.
I’ve been fortunate to know and learn from David over the years. Her insights unlock our hearts and minds to truths otherwise hard to face. Her prose is emotive and her stories are well-chosen. The book is full of essential lessons for today’s worker.
Perfect for lovers of Quiet and The Power of Now, Emotional Agility shares a new way of relating to yourself and the world around you
Every day we speak around 16,000 words - but inside minds we create tens of thousands more.
Thoughts such as 'I'm not spending enough time with my children' or 'I'm not good enough to present my work' can seem to be unshakeable facts. In reality, they're the judgemental opinions of our inner voice.
Drawing on more than twenty years of academic research and her own experiences, Susan David PhD, a psychologist and faculty member at…
Co-authored by Professor Martin Seligman, Tomorrowmind tackles the challenges of thriving in our modern world of work with a 70,000-year-old brain. How can we not only survive but flourish amidst the never-ending cycles of change and unprecedented uncertainty that threatens to drown us daily? Drawing from their original research, Kellerman and Seligman outline five key skills that today’s professionals need to develop to achieve their potential. It also offers guidance for organizational leaders looking to arm their workforce with the capabilities that will future-proof their firm’s success.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and…
The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.
Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. With no…
