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Books worth reading . . .These books have all been selected by Al Watts as recommended resources for developing leadership and organizational capabilities, and to help transform business as usual into business at its best.
We would like to hear about books that you recommend we add to the list. Please send us an email identifying your recommnded book(s) and tell us why you are making the recommendation.
After the first entry books are listed in alphabetical order by title. Click on a cover to learn more and order.
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 Navigating Integrity
By Al Watts
My new book positions integrity as a practical strategy that will not only build ethical and engaging cultures, but inrease leaership and organizational effectiveness. Learn to navigate four integrity challenges that most leaders and organizations face: Identity, Authenticity, Alignment and Accountability. |
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 7 Lessons for Leading In Crisis
By Bill George
Bil George is a Harvard Management professor and former CEO of Medtronic. While focused on navigating crises eminating from the 2008 economic meltdown, here are practical lessons for leading during any crisis. Favorites that resonate with me include "Facing Reality - Starting With Yourself," "Dig Deep For The Root Cause" and "Never Waste A Good Crisis."
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 Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value
By Bill George
Another book by this Harvard Management Professor and former CEO of medtronic, I like this because it reinforces many of the principles in my book Navigating Integrity - including the importance of leading from a values base, a sense of purpose, self-awareness and discipline.
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 Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd
By David McNally, Karl D. Speak
This book is an excellent resource for translating your values, competencies and aims into a personal brand that is distinctive and that demonstrates unique value. "By daring to be your own brand you get to be more of who you truly are, not less - the most authentic strategy for success."
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 Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
By Jim Collins, Jerry I Porras
In my opinion, this is one of the best business books of the last century - written in the 1990s but very much still relevant today. Jim Collins and Jerry Porrass share their research demonstrating how and why companies true to their core ideology and demonstrating adaptive mechanisms consistently outperform their peers - many times over.
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 Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose
By Richard Leider
For all the years I've known Richard, he has consistently demonstrated the personal and professional power of a sense of purpose. This inspiring book is no exception, as he invites and challenges those in later stages of their lives and careers to serve with a renewed sense of purpose - and younger ones to prepare for that role.
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 Crossing the Unknown Sea - Work as a Pilgrmage of Identity
By David Whyte
Truly an inspirational read from an exceptional writer who easily traverses betwen the worlds of poetry and the bottom line. Written as a captivating personal narrative, this book helps us connect our inner and outer worlds and envision the possibilities that good work holds for each of our lives. "You cannot choose either the artist or pragmatist inside you. There's a place for both." |
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 Crucial Conversations and Crucial Conversations
By Kerry Patterson et al
This two-book value pack expands on the concept of dialog that I introduce in my book. Crucial Conversations provides solid, straightforward advice for how to have "crucial conversations" - where opinions vary and stakes are high. Crucial Confrontations builds on those concepts and provides resources for conversations with the added element of disappointment - as in dealing with performance issues, broken promises or violated trust This combo will help you prepare for hard conversations and conduct them in ways that yield positive outcomes while preserving or improving relationships.
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 Dealing with the Tough Stuff: Practical Wisdom for Running a Values-Driven Business
By Margot Fraser, Lisa Lorimer
This is an excellent practical book for anyone in business seeking to align values with operations of a new or small and rapidly-growing comapny. There is lots of direct, practical advice here, and very honest sharing of mistakes about "tough stuff" for entrepreneurs and values-based businesses - icluding managing cash flow, not giving your values away, dealing with crises (including crises of confidence) and more. The authors know what they're talking about since they started and ran very sccessful and rapidly-growing values-based companies.
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 Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right
By Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.
This is an excellent practical guide for discernig the best course of action when values collide, or "right vs right" choices are called for. Badaracco first helps us understand why those critical decisions are "defining moments" in the lives of leaders and cultures of organizations, and in a very practical way borrows from philosphers and ethicists including Aristotle, Niettzche, William James, Jen Paul Sartre and Plato to provide perspectives for discerning best courses of action.
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 Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face-- And What to Do About It
By Richard Tedlow
This book should be on every executive's reading list. Using numerous examples, Tedlow explains the dynamics and antidotes for of "knowing but not knowing" that led to many corporate failures, including the demise of A&P, troubles of the American auto industry, IBM's early denial of the burdgeoning p.c. market and of course denial of plentiful signs that our eonomy was headed for a significant adjustment. This brings home the reality that leadership exellence requires the cabability to face harsh realities.
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 Good to Great
By Jim Collins
As with Collins' and Porrass' previous book "Built To Last," there's a solid research base here. Collins lays out six factors acconting for why some companies are able to make the leap from merely good or even mediocre performance to great ones: "level 5 leadership" (humility), "first who then what" ("Get the right people on the bus"), "confront the brutal facts," "the hedgehog concept" and "technology accelerators." From good to great "is not just about building on strength and competence, but about understanding what your organization truly has the potential to be the very best at and sticking to it."
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 Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet
By Howard Gardner, M. Csikszenthmihalyi and William Damon
Howard Gardner is the Harvard Professor who pioneered the concept of multiple intelligences. Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi brought us "Flow," and William Damon of Stanford authored "The Moral Child." Together they bring us a thoughtful work on the meaning of "god work," that is work that is of high quality and also socially responsible in rapidly changing times. They explore three professions in depth: journalism, genetics and law, to explore the dilemmas of adhereing to high professional standards amidst market and environmental factors that are countervailing forces.
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 How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything...In Business (and in Life)
By Dov Seidman
This book underscores the reality that "it's practical to be principled." Seidman clearly explains why today competitive advantage is dependent more than ever before on how services and products are delivered, vs just what. Included are sections on leading with values, the damage of dissonance and the importance of alignment, the value of transparency in a hyperconnected world, and the limitations of rules and compliance based systems. Seidman's comprehensive "Leadership Framework" model alone is worth the cost of this book.
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 How We Lead Matters: Reflections on a Life of Leadership
By Marilyn Carlson Nelson
This is a compact inspirational book by Carlson Companies' Chairperson, co-founder of the University of Minnesoa's Center for Integrative Leadership and named as "one of America's best leaders" by U.S. News and World Report. Each page is a story from Marilyn's professional or personal life accompanied by an inspirational quotation and lessons about leadership, teamwork, entrpreneurism and stewardship.
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 Integrity
By Steven L Carter
I agree with Stephen Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University: "(Our) celebration of integrity is intriguing: we seem to carry on a passionate love affair with a word that we scarecly pause to define." In this book Professor Carter delineates three conditions of integrity: discerning one's deepest understanding of right and wrong, acting consistently with what one has learned, and a willingness to state publicly how we are acting consistently with what we believe is right. He applies this framework to mulitple scenarios including religion, politics, journalism, marriage, sports and business. |
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 Leadership: From the Inside Out
By Kevin Cashman
In his second edition of this classic, Kevin devotes a chapter each to Personal Mastery, Purpose Mastery, Interpersonal Mastery, Change Mastery, Resilience Mastery and Being Mastery. This updated version builds on the first edition and masterfully connects timeless, enduring principles of human development and life effectiveness with leadership efectiveness. Here is a provocative, inspirational book to help you grow as a person and as a leader, and to leverage the concepts shared for increased organizational effectiveness. |
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 Leadership Jazz- Revised Edition: The Essential Elements of a Great Leader
By Max DePree
This is a timeless book by the Chairman of Herman Miller, the furniture company that regularly appears in Fortune Magazine's list of most admired companies. Just as skilled jazz musicians, DePree tells us, a leader's primary job is to "connect voice with touch." Included here are lessons about making and keeping promises, leading with heart, the gift of diversity, setting the tone while nurturing creativity, delegating and "polishing our gifts.".
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 Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good
By Stephen Young
Stephen Young is Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table, or CRT, an international network of senior executives dedicated to advancing moral capitalism globally. Moral Capitalism makes it clear that profits and virtuous business are not mutually exclusive, and calls on us to choose not one or the other, but a "third way;" that way is characterized by the Caux Round Table's seven Principles for Business. The book expands on each principle, provides CRT standards for applying it with each stakeholder group beyond shareholders, and builds in an assessment for how readers' organizations are meeting the standards. |
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 Moral Intelligence: Enhancing Business Performance and Leadership Success
By Doug Lennick, Fred Kiel
Doug Lennick, a former Amex top executive, and Fred Kiel do a masterful job of distinguishing moral intelligence from the balance of "threshold competencies" required for leadership excellence. They focus on four universal principles that are vital for sustained personal and organizational success: integrity, responsibility, compassion and forgiveness, noting that "integrity is the hallmark of the morally intelligent person." This is a superbly reserched book with many practical examples that will help readers build their "moral compass," stay true to their moral compass, lead their organizations more effectively and live their lives more fully.
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 Now, Discover Your Strengths
By Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton |
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 Repacking Your Bags
By: Richard Leider
I think this is an important book because ...
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 Spend Your Life Wisely
By Ross Levin
Ross Levin is one of the nation's top Certified Financial Planners. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine and Barron's among others, and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey and CBS This Morning shows. This is an excellent read, brimming with wisdom and sound advice for life, as well as financial planning. He writes in a very engaging manner, incorporating personal and client stories plus some humor to help us spend our lives wisely. The book and its author are beacons for aligning our pocketbooks with what counts most.
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 The Story Factor
By Annette Simons |
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 True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
By: Bill George
Here is a book that is worth reading over and over and over again...
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