The 75 Must Read Books for CEOs and Business Leaders
31. Mar, 2011 
7 Comments
In the CEO and Executive Development world, we get no shortage of book suggestions. Between what our CEO and Senior Executive Members are reading and books our CEO Global Network Speakers have written, we’ve got quite an extensive library!
Last month, I set out to build a list of top business books for CEOs and Senior Executives. The geek in me admits: I’ve read a lot of books (and own even more…), but I wanted some outside suggestions to add to our evolving ‘Ultimate CEO Library’.
I turned to the popular Q&A site Quora with a simple question: What books should be in the ultimate CEO’s library?
One month and 26 replies later, we’ve had some great contributions, and I wanted to share those here. If you have other books which you feel should make the list, PLEASE add them in the comments. I will work to keep this an updated post.
A quick note: titles in bold are books that belong to our CEO Global Network ‘must read’ list. These books provide powerful tools and case studies for our Members, and more importantly set a framework, context, and common vocabulary for discussing issues within our CEO Peer Groups and in mentoring one on one sessions with our Group Leaders.
My suggestion: build a library for your own executive team or small business and make a point of actively discussing the findings. You’ll find communications and problem solving become streamlined when everyone around the table can talk in similar terms. Kraig Kramers’ CEO Tools is a perfect example of this. We’ve seen it transform a number of executive teams and how they approach the numbers. As one of our CEO Members recently told me:
“For me its about making sure [my direct reports] are developing and learning and that we can speak a common language. We get to talk it up, see the benefits, and have rich discussions around things we’ve learned and how it will impact our business.”
So, without further ado, I present our living, breathing, sure-to-grow list of the 75+ books in the Ultimate CEO’s Library:
1. Good to Great – Jim Collins
2. Blue Ocean Strategy – Kim and Mauborgne
5. Open Leadership – Charlene Li
6. Predictably Irrational – Dan Arielly
7. First, Break All the Rules – Marcus Buckingham
8. All Marketers are Liars – Seth Godin
11. Permission Marketing – Seth Godin
12. How to Lie with Statistics – Darrell/Huff
14. Cluetrain Manifesto - Levine, Locke, Searls, Weinberger, McKee, Rangaswami, Gillmor
15. Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
16. Getting Things Done – Allen
17. Fierce Conversations – Susan Scott
18. The Dragonfly Effect – Aaker and Smith
21. Three Tensions – Dodd and Navarro
22. Innovator’s Dilemma – Christensen
23. Innovator’s Solution – Christensen
24. Seeing What’s Next – Christensen
25. The Leadership Pipeline – Charan
27. Guy Kawasaki – The Art of the Start
28. Guy Kawasaki – Enchantment
29. Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance – Gerstner
32. Employees First, Customers Second – Nayar
33. I Love You More Than my Dog – Jeanne Bliss
34. Elements of Style – Strunk and White
36. Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
37. How to Measure Anything – Hubbard
38. The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Campbell
39. Freakonomics – Levitt and Dubner
40. New Rules of Marketing and PR – David Meerman Scott
41. Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box – Arbinger Institute
42. The Hedgehog and the Fox – Isaiah Berlin
44. Glengarry, Glen Ross – David Mamet
45. Out of the Crisis- W Edwards Deming
46. Team of Rivals: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin
47. Managing – Henry Mintzberg
49. Trust Agents – Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
50. Wikibrands – Mike Dover and Sean Moffitt
52. The Leadership Challenge – James Kouzes, Barry Posner
53. Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher and William Ury
54. Genghis Khan Guide to Business – Brian Charles and John Warnes
55. Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing – Lee Thayer
56. Rework – 37 Signals Jason Friedman
57. The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Steve Blank
58. Up the Organization – Robert Townshend
59. Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands – Marty Neumeier
60. One Minute Manager – Blanchard and Johnson
61. Power of Pull – Hagel, Brown, Davison
62. 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – Maxwell
63. Crossing the Chasm – Moore
64. Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets – Bosworth
65. A Passion for Excellence – Tom Peters
66. Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder
70. Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
71. Five Temptations of a CEO – Patrick Lencioni
72. Primal Leadership – Daniel Goldman
73. The Truth about Leadership – Kouzes and Posner
74. The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working – Tony Scwartz
75. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith
76. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
78. The New Strategic Selling – Miller, Heiman
79. The New Capitalist Manifesto – Umair Haque
80. The Sales Bible – Jeffrey Gitomer
81. Thank You Economy – Gary Vaynerchuk
Note: I couldn’t have compiled the list without the amazing contributions of the community at Quora. They provided me with some great suggestions, as you can see above. I’d like to specifically thank: Michelle Kostya, Adam Rifkin, Saul Klein, Todd Sattersten, Debbie Laskey, Bonnie Nadri, Sam Huleatt, Omar Koudsi, Glenn Engler, Geir Freysson, Lucian Ghinda, Steven Hunter, Mauricio Soto, Tim Carlfeldt, Bianca Prade, Felix Velarde, Hector Padilla, Yvonne Divita, DK, Abhishek Shivkumar, Michael Weiss, Saul Kaplan, Ronald Woan, Chriss Voss, Billy Vaisberg, and Jen Lawrence.
Want your name on this list? Is a must-read book missing? Leave a comment below and I’ll add it.
Image Credit: Mr. T in DC on Flickr
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Kevin is Director, Digital Strategy & Innovation at CEO Global Network. He is regularly sought out by CEOs and Executives for his advice on technology, collaboration and the use of new media in business development. He has worked with organizations in industries ranging from construction to professional services in Asia, Europe and across North America. |
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