The Top 25 Management Books according to me

Written by

Sergio Caredda

Posted on

October 20, 2020

Tags

Reading

After publishing my reading stats for 2019 and having now engaged in the new 2020 reading challenge, many people have asked me what my favourites management books are. As I have reviewed many books on this blog, I’ve decided to put together a list of the ones that resonated more with me and rank them. This list only picks from the ones that I have reviewed on this website, so it does not claim to be a universal list. There are more that I should consider probably (and I will in due time). You can also find this list as a Listopia list on Goodreads.

Leadership: A Critical Text

Simon Western

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Leadership: Theory and Practice

Peter G. Northouse

4.5

Team of Teams

Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell

4.5

Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together

Margaret Heffernan

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

The Infinite Leader

Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren

3.5

Work. A History of How We Spend Our Time

James Suzman

Work: The Last 1,000 Years

Andrea Komlosy

3.5

The Tyranny of Merit

Michael J. Sandel

Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny

Witold Szablowski

4.5

The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change

Ellen Ruppel Shell

How to Survive the Organizational Revolution

Ard-Pieter de Man, Pieter Koene and Martijn Ars

Team Topologies

Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

4.5

Unboss

Lars Kolind and Jacob Bøtter

Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini

High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove

The Courage Map: 13 Principles for Living Boldly

Franziska Iseli

What’s Your Pronoun?

Dennis Baron

3.5

The Team That Managed Itself

Christina Wodtke

4.5

The Covid-19 Survival Guide

Fons Trompenaars

3.5

The Three Ways of Getting Things Done

Gerard Fairtlough

4.5

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Anna Wiener

Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It

Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen

4.5

Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions

Phil Rosenzweig

The Ride of a Lifetime

Robert Iger

The Fearless Organization

Amy Edmondson

Maverick!

Ricardo Semler

The Peter Principle

Dr Laurence J Peter and Raymond Hull

Midnight in Chernobyl

Adam Higginbotham

The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy

Mariana Mazzucato

Flat Army

Dan Pontefract

How can we structure an organisation for true performance?

Reinventing Organizations

Frederic Laloux

Transform: A rebel's guide for digital transformation

Gerry McGovern

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

David Epstein

The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change

Siobhan McHale

Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise

Alfred Chandler

Corporate Rebels

Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree

How to bring back Fun at work. An exploration of what Rebel Pioneers do in transforming organisations

Implementing Beyond Budgeting

Bjarte Bogsnes

How can you move away from traditional budgeting cycle? This books explains how.

Collaboration

Morten Hansen

Exploring networking and Collaboration and how these create value in organisations.

Work Rules!

Laszlo Bock

How Google transformed into a People Oriented organisation based on science and data.

The Passion Economy

Adam Davidson

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

4.5

How to understand the true Optimal Experience

Radical Candor

Kim Scott

Creativity, Inc.

Ed Catmull

The best book that really illustrates the importance of Culture in Organization. And being intentional in designing for creativity.

Agile People

Pia-Maria Thoren

Linking agile to real People Transformation in companies.

The Economist Guide to Organisation Design

Naomi Stanford

A sleek guide to Organisation Design for Managers and HR.

Talking to Strangers

Malcolm Gladwell

This book will change your mind of what human nature is with regards to strangers.

The 7 Mental Images of National Culture

Huib Wursten

Easy to understand cultural Mental images to better work together.

An Everyone Culture

Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Understanding what being Deliberately Developmental truly means.

Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz

Frank J. Barrett

True organisations are about real Improvisation. This the big lesson from Jazz

Rebel Talent

Francesca Gino

Real results are often delivered by those that decide to be Rebels.

The Leader You Want to Be

The Leader You Want to Be

Amy Jen Su

The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality

Luciano Floridi

What is that the Technology Revolution is bringing?

The Dark Sides of Empathy

Fritz Breithaupt

3.5

Rebel Ideas

Matthew Syed

What is Diversity really? An entire new approach to being different.

Digital Transformation

Alessandro Braga

Scrum 101: The most frequently asked questions about Agile with Scrum

David Lowe, James Wyllie and Jiten Vara

3.5

Measure what Matters

John Doerr

True Transformation comes only from measuring what matters. This the big lesson from OKR guru John Derr.

The Infinite Game

Simon Sinek

Why She Buys

Bridget Brennan

Permanent Record

Edward Snowden

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few

James Surowiecki

Is it really true that crowds are wise?

What Works: Gender Equality By Design

Iris Bohnet

Gender Equality doesn’t just happen: it needs intentional design.

The Employee Experience Advantage

Jacob Morgan

What is the true advantage of working on Employee Experience

Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

Malcolm Harris

Start with Why

Simon Sinek

Finding your true Purpose beyond the What and How.

The Technology Fallacy

Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, and Garth R. Andrus

Digital Transformation is not just about Technology.

The Singularity is Near

Ray Kurzweil

Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

Daniel Pink

What is the pushes real Motivation? Daniel Pink’s ideas get you really through this in detail

The End of Average

Todd Rose

We have lived in an age were Avegarianism has been rampant. Let’s understand why and move on.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Mark Manson

ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

4.5

Simplicity can really be the best thing you want to master.

What about other books?

The above is just the list of my Top 25 Management Books. But I tend to read also a lot of other books. You can find my latest reading list and my entire library on GoodReads. On the sidebar, you can check what I am currently reading (including non-management books). And here below is my (management) reading list: the books that I plan to read next.