Here are 48 books that Future Ready fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a journalist covering the Future of Work and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I encountered pioneering social entrepreneurs and newly minted tech billionaires whose ideologies attracted millions and have since shaped our culture, economy, and society. I've curated some of the most impactful books that informed my understanding of their ambitions and how work is evolving, as well as the thought leaders who inspired them. Engaging with this content and integrating it over the last decade has transformed my worldview, leading me to a more fulfilling, peaceful, and creative life—but it’s been quite the journey!
Most businesses today are filled with untapped creative potential. The primary barrier? Bureaucracy.
Following in the footsteps of Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, this book takes a more academic approach, offering CEOs and MBAs rigorous case studies and practical strategies for influencing culture and reducing bureaucratic bloat. Authors Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini—also a McKinsey alum—argue that to be more innovative and adaptable, organizations need a new DNA, free from rigid structures and outdated management practices.
If crowd-sourced strategy, decentralized decision-making, and collective profit-sharing sound like a dream, this book shows how companies of all sizes are succeeding with these methods, adopted by global manufacturers like a leading French tire company and a Chinese appliance giant. It offers a practical guide for anyone looking to reshape work, regardless of their place in the organizational hierarchy.
In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring.
Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book.
In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing…
One remarkable leader I've studied, Bob Davids, said that the greatest scarcity in the world is not oil or food but leadership. For two decades, I've been on a quest to uncover the essence of a transformational leader, someone who cultivates an environment where employees' needs are so well-addressed that they are eager to show up and give their best every day. This journey led me to study hundreds of leaders and books, all serving as the foundation for my thoughts and writings. I trust that these books will kickstart your own journey. Mine has guided me to play a pivotal role in the corporate liberation movement, involving hundreds of leaders who have transformed their organizations.
This is the freshest account I’ve read by a leader of his company’s transformational journey: Ricardo Semler became CEO of his father’s company, SEMCO, at the age of 21, and wrote the book in his early thirties, not to forget the transformative journey he just led.
But even more than the narrative itself, I loved Semler’s philosophical reflections, densely packed throughout the book. Example: “We simply don’t believe our employees have an interest in coming in late and doing as little as possible. After all, the same people raise children and elect mayors and presidents. They are adults. In SEMCO, we treat them as adults.”
Semler, twice chosen as Brazil’s businessperson of the year, proves how a leader, driven by authentic beliefs, can lead a transformation that makes people and—consequently—the company thrive.
I am passionate about management innovation, exploring and embracing new and better ways of leading and managing. For almost 30 years, I have helped organizations all over the world get started on a Beyond Budgeting journey, alongside my Finance and HR roles in Borealis and Statoil/Equinor. I'm forever thankful for the great opportunities these companies have given me. I have now said goodbye to my corporate life for Bogsnes Advisory, hoping to help even more organizations radically improve their management practices. I'm Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT), a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach, and winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation Award.
Pim de Morree and Joost Minnarr both left safe and good corporate jobs to explore the world of management innovation.
They toured the world, meeting and learning from great companies and leaders across a variety of industries. The result is a book of wonderful stories and deep insights about what these companies were rebelling against, and what they did instead.
8 radical lessons from 100 of the world's most inspiring companies
Today's workplaces are broken. Badly broken. With 85% of employees disengaged, 23% feeling burned out and 37% believing that their job makes no useful contribution to society, work as we know it today is simply not working.
The good news? There is a better way. And it's not just theory. It's already practiced in pioneering organisations around the globe. Drawing on Minnaar and De Morree's visits to 100+ of the world's most progressive organisations, this book gives direct evidence that you can make work enjoyable and rewarding, while boosting…
I am passionate about management innovation, exploring and embracing new and better ways of leading and managing. For almost 30 years, I have helped organizations all over the world get started on a Beyond Budgeting journey, alongside my Finance and HR roles in Borealis and Statoil/Equinor. I'm forever thankful for the great opportunities these companies have given me. I have now said goodbye to my corporate life for Bogsnes Advisory, hoping to help even more organizations radically improve their management practices. I'm Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT), a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach, and winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation Award.
Jeremy Hope (RIP) and Robin Fraser were two British authors/researchers who, in the late nineties, discovered that a number of companies had ditched traditional budgeting and much more in favour of more adaptive and human management models.
They visited and interviewed these organisations, including the European petrochemicals company Borealis where we kicked out the traditional budget in 1995. The result was this fascinating book, and the international network Beyond Budgeting Roundtable which today is more active than ever.
The traditional annual budgeting process--characterized by fixed targets and performance incentives--is time consuming, overcentralized, and outdated. Worse, it often causes dysfunctional and unethical managerial behavior. Based on an intensive, international study into pioneering companies, Beyond Budgeting offers an alternative, coherent management model that overcomes the limitations of traditional budgeting. Focused around achieving sustained improvement relative to competitors, it provides a guiding framework for managing in the twenty-first century.
I’ve always been fascinated by how we can fulfill our potential in a way that allows us to thrive rather than burning ourselves out in the process. My motto is I’d like to ‘save the world, but be back in time for tea.’ My fascination has led me down all sorts of intriguing avenues. I’ve become a stand-up comic (and taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Fringe), exploring how humor can help us tackle tough topics. I’ve researched mental health (I’m currently studying for an MSc in the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health), I’ve studied elite sports, and I’ve been an Executive Coach to leaders of diverse organizations.
I found this book wonderfully confronting! We’ve all heard the cliché that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade (grrr!), but this book helped me figure out HOW. It provoked me to reframe problems simply as contexts and celebrate constraints as clarity, helping me move forward.
Although it is very much a business book—full of plenty of corporate examples (I particularly loved the ones about growing crops and selling beer!)—I’ve found techniques like the ‘propelling questions’ useful more broadly, too.
An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations into opportunities A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35…
The more I learn about the brain, the more I want to dig in and discover more. Why do we procrastinate? Why do people buy things? Why do some people love unlocking these topics weekly on The Brainy Business podcast (where each person on this list has been a guest) and sharing those insights with the world? When it comes to selling and buying in a brainy way, behavioral economics is the best way to get there, and these books are all a great first step into learning what behavioral science is, how the brain really works, and up-leveling your brand.
Signs and symbols are all around us – are you using the right ones for your brand? When you don’t spend enough time thinking about the semiotics, it can create an undercurrent that misaligns what you are saying with what people experience with your brand.
If you want to sell more easily, I highly recommend Using Semiotics in Marketing (and her other book, Using Semiotics in Retail) – this fascinating world will change your branding for the better forever!
Semiotics is a superpower for marketers. It's a proven, powerful method of uncovering consumer insight, tailoring brand strategies that work and generating profit for brands.
Companies such as Unilever and P&G have attested to the success of Lawes semiotics in stimulating innovation and boosting sales. Now newly updated, this second edition is packed with even more revelations about brands, consumers and their emerging needs. Three new chapters reveal the unseen social forces that drive the Be Kind movement, public appetite for sincerity and the emotions of younger generations.
Using Semiotics in Marketing is an acclaimed how-to guide that makes semiotics…
I have been studying how leaders and their teams make complex decisions for the past 25 years. As a professor, I am passionate about teaching students and managers. My published work includes three books, as well as numerous best-selling management case studies. I have served on the faculty at Bryant University in Rhode Island for the past 16 years, and prior to that, I served on the faculty at Harvard Business School for 6 years.
I found Russo & Schoemaker’s book to be a useful, practical, step-by-step guide for refining the way I make decisions. They inspired me to think about why I make flawed choices at times, as well as why the teams on which I work might stumble as well. In my work, I’ve been able to then employ some of the techniques they describe for overcoming various decision-making biases and obstacles. As you read the book, you will find tips that you can use right away in your personal lives and professional work.
Business revolves around making decisions, often risky decisions, usually with incomplete information and too often in less time than we need. Executives at every level, in every industry, are confronted with information overload, less leeway for mistakes, and a business environment that changes rapidly. In light of this increased pressure and volatility, the old-fashioned ways of making decisions–depending on intuition, common sense, and specialized expertise–are simply no longer sufficient. Distilling over thirty years of groundbreaking research, Winning Decisions, written by two seasoned business advisers and world leaders in behavioral decision studies, is a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind guide to the proven methods…
Accurate and precise forecasting is essential for successful planning and policy from economics to epidemiology. We have been keen to understand why so many forecasts turn out to be highly inaccurate since making dreadful forecasts ourselves, and advising UK government agencies (Treasury, Parliament, Bank of England) during turbulent periods. As simple extrapolation often beats model-based forecasting, we have been developing improved methods that draw on the best aspects of both, and have published more than 60 articles and 6 books attracting more than 6000 citations by other scholars. Our recommended books cover a wide range of forecasting methods—suggesting there is no optimal way to look into the future.
When can we trust a forecast? Given how often forecasts end up being very wide of the mark, a degree of scepticism might well be warranted. Paul Goodwin provides an entertaining account of forecasting, arguing that intuition may serve us well in some settings, but that computer-based analysis of big data might be expected to prevail in others.
Whether it's an unforeseen financial crash, a shock election result or a washout summer that threatens to ruin a holiday in the sun, forecasts are part and parcel of our everyday lives. We rely wholeheartedly on them, and become outraged when things don't go exactly to plan.
But should we really put so much trust in predictions? Perhaps gut instincts can trump years of methodically compiled expert knowledge? And when exactly is a forecast not a forecast? Forewarned will answer all of these intriguing questions, and many more.
Packed with fun anecdotes and startling facts, Forewarned is a myth-busting guide…
I found my passion for sustainable mobility while working on my PhD thesis about electric cars at a time when no one was interested in electric cars. I am fascinated by the disruptive forces in the transportation space. With my long-term work experience in management consulting, corporate, academics, and startups, I’m trying to make a contribution to making transport carbon-free.
This book paints a detailed picture of how the future of mobility will look like.
It explains what the hype around electric mobility, autonomous driving, car sharing, and ride-hailing is about. It is a great introduction for everyone who wants to get started in understanding the future of sustainable mobility and carbon-free transport.
Will we really soon no longer be sitting behind the wheel of our own car, but will only be taken to our destination by driverless electric taxis? Should cities introduce car sharing? What role will electric scooters, cable cars or man-carrying drones play in the mobility systems of major cities? This book finally explains in a generally understandable way what is really behind buzzwords such as electric mobility, autonomous driving, digitalization and mobility services such as car sharing or ride-hailing, how far advanced these technologies are today, and above all in what relationships and dependencies they are to each other.…
We first met about 10 years ago at Sheffield Hallam University, bonding as work colleagues over a love of enabling students to understand wealth management and finance in a way that we hoped they would find interesting and accessible. The books we chose mix our love of storytelling and making finance accessible by using real-world experiences. They do this in a unique way, challenging the reader to think about their understanding and perspective, something we try to do every day. It has been lovely to reread these books before writing the reviews, reminding us of what makes us tick. We hope they help you to find your tick too.
This compendium of authors writing around their specific expertise is a compelling read. However, I chose it specifically for one chapter, the chapter on "Communication Apprehension and Accounting Education."
Two of the authors of this chapter were my professors when I was at university and their novel approach to education and assessment, which was years before its time, laid the foundations for skills and behaviors I have used in both my commercial and academic life. Increasingly I see students and professionals who are not as successful in their career due to a lack of communication skills.
For me, this book provides a practical and thought-provoking approach for those looking to understand a fundamental component of the financial world in the 21st century.
One of the prime purposes of accounting is to communicate and yet, to date, this fundamental aspect of the discipline has received relatively little attention. The Routledge Companion to Accounting Communication represents the first collection of contributions to focus on the power of communication in accounting.
The chapters have a shared aim of addressing the misconception that accounting is a purely technical, number-based discipline by highlighting the use of narrative, visual and technological methods to communicate accounting information. The contents comprise a mixture of reflective overview, stinging critique, technological exposition, clinical analysis and practical advice on topical areas of interest…
