CEO Reading List: 6 Upcoming Business Books to Read This Summer
A great CEO never passes up a chance to learn. Here are six books coming out soon,
each with lessons for how to think about innovation, growth, and personal success.
Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone
Lynda Gratton
Penguin Business
March 2022
256 pages
Much ink has been spilled about how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the workplace. But here is the definitive look at these changes and what they mean for your organization. Gratton, an expert in organizational behavior, takes a rigorous yet practical look at how work best gets done in a changed world of WFH, hybrid work, deeper work-life integration and more. She includes in-depth looks at the practices of real-world companies like HSBC, Fujitsu, and Telstra. Gary Hamel calls the book “thought-provoking, deeply researched, and invaluable.”
The Truth About Crypto: A Practical, Easy-to-Understand Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain, NFTs, and Other Digital Assets
Ric Edelman
Simon & Schuster
SMay 2022
400 pages
Does talk of blockchain, crypto, and NFTs tie your brain in knots? Author, radio host, and personal finance guru Ric Edelman is here to save the day. His new book is a plainspoken investor’s guide to these much-hyped innovations. Edelman explains them as new asset classes and shows the bounty of opportunities they offer to investors, and their advisors, who are in the know.
Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard
JBo Seo
Penguin Press
June 2022
352 pages
All it takes is a quick visit to cable new or a dip into Twitter to see that the quality of debate in the modern age has declined precipitously. In this book, Bo Seo, debate champion and former coach of Harvard’s debate team, makes a passionate argument for the virtues of engaged, good-faith debate. It’s an endeavor that gave him confidence and direction as a Korean immigrant child struggling to learn English. And it’s also a skill that today’s CEOs can use to great effect, whether in persuasion, selling, or simply presenting ideas clearly.
Leading Lightly: Lower Your Stress, Think with Clarity, and Lead with Ease
Jody Michael
Greenleaf Book Group Press
June 2022
248 pages
“Leading lightly means that no matter what happens during your day, you have the capacity to approach everything with enduring easy and clarity,” writes psychotherapist and renowned executive coach Jody Michael in the opening pages of Leading Lightly. Combining insights on leadership, mental health, and overall wellness, Michael offers a perspective shifting guide to leading and living with a lighter touch—even through profoundly heavy times.
From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading
Marlene Chism
Berrett-Koehler
May 2022
256 pages
The job of CEO comes packaged with lots of unavoidable conflict. The most effective CEOs therefore learn to embrace that conflict rather than shunting it away, masking it, or passing it on to others. Chism, a longtime authority on workplace drama, offers inspiration and guidance for any leader who wants to learn the superpower of courageous conflict, a skill that banishes stress, builds trust, and leads to better business outcomes.
Life & Death Decisions In The C-Suite
NextGen Benefits Advisers, et al.
December 2021
Bottom Line Solutions
282 pages
Today’s large employers are tasked with the complex, frustrating, and—as this book argues—dangerous task of providing health insurance to their employees. This book collects the insights and expertise of leading US benefits consultants and advisors, including Daniel LaBroad, Jennifer Berman, Aaron Ault, and Nelson Griswold, to reveal the dysfunctions that plague the current healthcare system and offer C-suite leaders guidance on how to lower insurance costs while providing better care for employees across the organization.
