Recommended Reading on Management
The following list is the product of a five-year review of the literature on
management, with ongoing attention to the subject. The books selected represent ideas
that are both truly insightful and practical. Many of the books also point to other books
on a topic.
General
Handy, Charles, Understanding Organizations
Kleiner, Art, The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate
Change, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1996. An entertaining and informative
history of organizational change and the people who invented it.
Semler, Ricardo, Maverick: The Success Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace,
New York: Warner Books, 1993. Semler has broken all the assumptions about what
management is or must be. In particular, he demonstrates in this engaging book that
there are in fact no limits to employee empowerment. Semco, his Brazilian
engineering and manufacturing firm, has been successfully managed as an employeecontrolled democracy for over 25 years.
Senge, Peter, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, and Bryan J. Smith, The
Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning
Organization, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994. An excellent summary of most
of the most interesting developments in management in the last 25 years.
Stack, Jack, The Great Game of Business: Unlocking the Power and Profitability of
Open-Book Management, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994. Stories about
transparency as an essential tool of management, with guidelines for sharing finances
and decision making with employees.
Change Management
Bunker, Barbara Benedict, and Billie T. Alban, Large Group Interventions: Engaging the
Whole System for Rapid Change, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997. The
best introduction to designing and facilitating meetings for collaborative problem
solving, and the literature about it.
Anderson, Dean, and Linda Ackerman Anderson, Beyond Change Management:
Advanced Strategies for Today’s Transformational Leaders, San Francisco: JosseyBass/Pfeiffer, 2001. An excellent summary of the best thinking about how to plan and
manage organizational change.
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Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We
Work: Seven Languages for Transformation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers,
2001. Brilliant and often counterintuitive insights into framing organizational
conversations.
Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change: How to Unlock It and
Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, Boston: Harvard Business
School Press, 2009. A detailed guide to identifying and overcoming obstacles to
change in both individuals and organizations.
Palus, Charles J., and David M. Horth, The Leader’s Edge: Six Competencies for
Navigating Complex Challenges, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishing, 2002.
Engaging strategies for helping people think about and address complex problems.
Watzlawick, Paul, John Weakland, and Richard Fisch, Change: Principles of Problem
Formation and Problem Resolution, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974.
Interesting insights into why change can be so illusive and how to think differently
about it.
Weisbord, Marvin, and Sandra Janoff, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!: Ten
Principles for Leading Meetings That Matter, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, Inc., 2007. The best simple guide to basic skills in facilitation.
Communications
Argyris, Chris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses
Cialdini, Robert B., Influence: Science and Practice, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. A
brilliant analysis of the techniques people use to persuade us to do things we might
not otherwise do that is both scary and empowering.
Noonan, William, Discussing the Undiscussable: A Guide to Overcoming Defensive
Routines in the Workplace, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007. A framework
for understanding what happens when communication in organizations goes wrong
and how to get back on track.
Patterson, Kerry, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer, Crucial Conversations:
Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Maybe the
best book on “difficult conversations.” Practical, not too complicated, and maintains
the focus on what you can do to change the conversation.
Schwarz, Roger, The Skilled Facilitator, New and Revised, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishing, 2002. A framework for understanding what effective communication
requires and how to practice it.
Decision Making and Problem Solving
Adams, James L., Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas, New York: Basic
Books, 2001. Reflections on how to think about complex challenges that is full of
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wisdom, fun to read, and a good introduction to the literature on creativity, problem
solving, and decision making.
Bazerman, Max, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Fifth Edition, New York:
John Wiley & Sons, 2002. A good, short summary of the most common errors in
decision making.
Klein, Gary, Intuition at Work: Why Developing Your Gut Instincts Will Make You Better
at What You Do, New York: Currency Doubleday, 2003. Guidance for developing
your capability for decision-making by a pioneer in the study of how people actually
make decisions. (A more academic presentation of Gary Klein’s research on decision
making can be found in his book, Sources of Power.)
Knowledge Management
Garvin, David A., Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to
Work, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000. A practical guide to what the
“learning organization” means for running a business.
Leadership
Heifetz, Ronald A., Leadership Without Easy Answers, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994. What it takes to lead in the context of ambiguity and complex
challenges that proposes a new way of thinking about leadership.
Bruch, Heike, and Sumantra Ghoshal, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers
Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time, Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 2004. A framework for thinking about what it takes to get
things done, for assessing your own performance and coaching others.
Drath, Wilfred, The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership, San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2001. An enlightening framework for understanding why
leadership is different things to different people.
Scharmer, C. Otto, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, Cambridge, MA:
Society for Organizational Learning, 2007. A systematic and serious consideration of
what management would look like if we went about it as fully conscious, feeling
beings.
Marketing
Kotler, Philip, Kotler on Marketing
Zagula, John, and Richard Tong, The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for
Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market, New York: Portfolio, 2004. An
interesting framework for thinking about marketing strategies.
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Organizational Culture
Adizes, Ichak, Managing Corporate Lifecycles, Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 1999.
A brilliant if also idiosyncratic and nerdy model for understanding organizational
dynamics and how they evolve over time. Only available from www.adizes.com.
Cross, Rob, and Andrew Parker, The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding
How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 2004. Explains how to conduct a “social network analysis” and use it to
understand organizational dynamics.
Oshry, Barry, Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab, San Francisco: BerrettKoehler Publishers, Inc., 1999. An insightful model for understanding the dynamics
of those at the top, those in the middle, and those at the bottom of organizations.
Schein, Edgar H., The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1999. A practical guide to understanding and working with organizational
culture by one of the first people to study it.
People Management
Coens, Tom, and Mary Jenkins, Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire
and What to Do Instead, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2002. A
sophisticated look at the limitations of performance appraisals and various ways to
accomplish similar objectives through other means.
Project Management
Allen, David, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, Revised Edition,
New York: Penguin Books, 2015. How to apply basic principles of rational thought to
managing the details of life and work.
Berkun, Scott, Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management, Sebastopol, CA:
O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2008. A nontechnical discussion of project management that
considers the essence of each of the managerial skills it requires.
Strategy
Black, J. Stewart, and Hal B. Gregersen, Leading Strategic Change: Breaking Through
the Brain Barrier, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2003. A
practical discussion of how to anticipate and address the conceptual and psychological
obstacles to organizational change.
Christensen, Clayton, The Innovator’s Dilemma
Koch, Richard, The Financial Times Guide to Strategy
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La Piana, David, The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a
Rapid-Response World, St. Paul, MN: The Fieldstone Alliance, 2008. A good
synthesis of the best thinking about strategy formation and how to go about doing it
for any organization, not just nonprofits.
Mintzberg, Henry, Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of
Organizations, New York: The Free Press, 1989. The best thinking of one of the best
management thinkers.
Sloan, Julia, Learning to Think Strategically, Burlington, VT: Butterworth-Heinemann,
2006. An instructive study of how good strategists think and how they came by their
abilities.
Start-ups
Kawasaki, Guy, The Art of the Start
Teams
Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith, The Discipline of Teams: A MindbookWorkbook for Delivering Small Group Performance, New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2001. A workbook for developing and coaching teams by the people who wrote
a classic book on team dynamics.
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