100 books like Why Simple Wins

If you’ve ever wondered where all this talk of “paradigms” and “paradigm shifts” comes from, this book is the answer. A paradigm, according to Kuhn, is a set of theories and beliefs that guide scientific research by telling us what there is to know and how we can come to know it.

When a paradigm changes, a paradigm shift occurs. Some purveyors of the paranormal claim that their view represents a paradigm shift in our thinking. Kuhn’s book will help you assess whether that is indeed the case.

One of the keys to simplifying your organization, and your life, is the ability to communicate clearly, quickly, and powerfully.

Todd Cherches, the author of Visual Leadership, is a master at doing this. In his book, he makes the saying “a picture is worth 1000 words” come alive. Without needing to be an artist, Todd shows you how to use diagrams, sketches, visual metaphors, simple graphs, and all sorts of visual imagery to make your communications more powerful, fun, and memorable. 

Not only that, but Todd also practices what he preaches – so the book is filled with stories and anecdotes that make it not only a useful read, but an enjoyable one as well.  

Yes, Stella is a book – but it’s really a fable about how to cut through corporate inertia and bureaucracy to drive innovation.

When I first read it, I was blown away – a story about farm animals saving their farm from bankruptcy – with lots of clear and compelling messages. And it was actually fun to read. Since I first learned about it from one of the authors (we were working with a common client), I’ve recommended it to lots of other executives, and it’s made a difference.

One of the key lessons from Stella is that truly transformative innovation often needs to be separated from the core business – with different resources, budgets, metrics, and expectations. Otherwise it’s going to be in competition with the core business – and it will end up getting the short end of the stick in terms of money and people.

Then when… show more.

It’s not easy to reduce complexity and drive simplification with your team or organization. 

To do so you need to become the best leader you can be. For many managers this means working on their deficiencies, bolstering their weaknesses, and trying as hard as possible to learn new behaviors. 

What Kaplan and Kaiser recommend in Fear Your Strengths however is not to focus first on weaknesses but rather to start development by becoming aware of strengths that you might be overdoing.

This is an incredibly simple, but counter-intuitive approach to leadership development.  In essence, it suggests that leaders often get into trouble by dialing up what they do well. For example, a manager who is good at strategy sometimes makes the strategy so complex that it becomes difficult for others to understand it or carry it out. 

Conversely a manager who is good at execution can sometimes get caught up… show more.

Aside from my research on rewards management, pro-social organizational behavior, and employee substance misuse, I’ve focused a lot of my attention on workplace incivility. 

Bob Sutton’s book was one of the factors leading me to look at this topic.  We’ve all encountered incivility at work and all know – at least implicitly – how it impacts us. Sutton’s book was one of the first to make sense – at least for me – of such behavior, not only by identify the “dirty dozen” (12 highly prevalent manifestations of workplace incivility), but also by detailing how damaging such behavior can be to individuals and the organizations employing them.

Aside from giving me insight into the prevalence and nature of employee MIS-management, this book was the start of a personal journey to discover some of the less obvious (but potentially more robust) implications of such problematic organizational behavior.

The novel consists of interviews on a spaceship in the 22nd century.

The writing is beautiful and poetic, describing abstract objects in moving ways. I was deeply impressed how one can piece together various narrative threads through these truncated interviews. And it is a novel inspired by a visual arts exhibit. I love the collaborative aspect of it!

By the end, you’ll begin questioning what it means to be human. It’s translated from Danish, so yes, please, everyone read more translated fiction!

I’m a longtime fan of the work BetterUp Labs has done in the research field of human performance, and this book, co-written by BetterUp’s Chief Innovation Officer Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, is a delightful collection of its insights.

With additional guidance from co-author Marty Seligman, commonly known as the father of positive psychology, Tomorrowmind offers an anthropological perspective on the evolution of our work experience and how our cultural expectations have shifted.

By shining a light on helpful case studies throughout, it demonstrates how we’ll need to change our individual mindsets and behaviors to operate effectively in the future of work. If you care about creativity and connection in your workplace, this will be an important addition for your bookshelf.

In Thiefing a Chance, Rebecca Prentice shows us what life is like for women who make clothing in a factory in Trinidad – a livelihood shared by more than 75 million people worldwide, most of them in the Global South. I recommend this book because although Prentice discusses the ways that late-capitalism and neoliberal structural reforms have produced the difficult economic and working conditions that her research participants must cope with, she also shows how the women are not passive subjects in these processes. She documents how they take every opportunity on the factory floor to informally gain skills and to make ‘illicit’ garments out of spare materials, which they can sell outside of work.

However, Prentice resists the temptation to analyze these practices as ‘social resistance,’ and instead shows how such informal practices actually encourage these women to embrace neoliberal identities of competitive, enterprising individuals.

I have been in the fashion industry for over two + decades and have been fortunate to work with Alyssa Hardy the author of this book. She has featured me in several articles she writes for and has been a model in one of my anti-bullying campaigns.

Why I would recommend her book is not only because I think she is a rock star but because how important her book is to our society. It gives a real insider look at the rise of “fast fashion” and the abuse and neglect of garment workers.

I was skeptical when a former boss of mine recommended this book (sounded kind of woo-woo), but I was won over by Whyte’s perceptive, off-beat takes on great epic poems and their application to our quests in today’s corporate world. From Beowulf’s fight with Grendel to Dante’s journey through the Inferno, from Cassandra’s foretelling of the sack of Troy to Fionn’s eating of the Salmon of Knowledge, I was enthralled—and emboldened to explore the dark, creative, messy side of leadership in my own life.