I have been a consultant for 37 years. Like all responsible consultants, I fulfill my professional duty and buy books. Many books. More than I care to admit were impulse purchases backed up with inverted rational and upside-down logic. I value my books. My books are my thought partners, sources of inspiration and deep reservoirs of useful information.
I would not go anywhere without them. Or so I have always told myself. Theresa and I have sold our house and we move in 59 days. This is a holding pattern move. If it wasn’t for the pandemic and the dismal leadership of Donald Trump, we would be moving to Europe. As it is, we are going nowhere soon.
We will move into a very small carriage house on a beautiful piece of waterside property until May 2021. The house is too small for all my books, so only a few get to make the trip to the new rental house and the rest go into storage.
I have had several conversations with consulting colleagues and the same question always arises: “What books will you take and how will you choose?”
It’s been an easy question to answer. The ideas and methods in the books listed below have had a deep impact on my thinking, informed my consulting actions and produced useful results. Some of the authors are well known in my profession and others are just emerging. I have only met seven of these writers, but I trust all of the ideas found in these books. As the saying goes, I stand on the shoulders of giants, or authors in this case. Here are the books that will make it into the carriage house and then on to Europe.
Bruce Springsteen makes the cut because…well, he’s the Boss.
Leadership Can Be Taught – Sharon Daloz Parks
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership – Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow
Case In Point – My Briefing Notes
Dynamics of Consulting – My Briefing Notes
The End of Leadership – Barbara Kellerman
Birth of the Chaordic Age – Dee Hock
Leadership – Keith Grint
Making Learning Whole – David Perkins
Mastery – George Leonard
Community – Peter Block
Anything by Wright Thompson
The Handbook for Teaching Leadership – Scott Snook & others
Field of Social Science – Kurt Lewin
Deep Work – Cal Newport
The Fifth Discipline FieldBook – Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, and others
Power and Love – Adam Kahane
Humble Inquiry – Edgar Schein
The Tao of Coaching – Max Landsberg
Humble Consulting – Edgar Schein
Flawless Consulting – Peter Block
Flawless Consulting Fieldbook – Peter Block and many others
The Art of Possibility – Ben & Rosamund Zander
Sitting In The Fire – Arnold Mindell
Email From The Soul – William Ayot
Factfulness – Hans Rosling
23 Things They Don’t Teach You About Capitalism – Ha-Joon Chang
Dispatch – Michael Herr
The Art of Gathering – Priya Parker
Crossing The Unknown Sea – David Whyte
The Elephant and the Flea – Charles Handy
Process Consulting – Edgar Schein
Rules for Revolutionaries – Guy Kawasaki
Beautiful Evidence – Edward Tufte
The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharp
Moneyball – Michael Lewis
Reframing Business – Richard Normann
100 Selected Poems – E.E. Cummings
The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran
The Reflective Practitioner – Donald Schon
The Life We are Given – George Leonard and Michael Murphy
The Art of the Impossible – Vaclav Havel
Organizational Culture and Leadership – Edgar Schein
After the Fall – Arthur Miller
The Spirit of St. Andrews – Alister MacKenzie
A Brief History of Everything – Ken Wilber
Let Your Life Speak – Parker Palmer
Systems Thinking for Social Change – David Peter Stroh
Work, Death and Life Itself – Burkard Sievers
On Dialogue – David Bohm
Agent of Change – Richard Beckhard
Oxford Tutorial – David Palfreyman
Making a Leadership Change – Thomas North Gilmore
The Hero with A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
The Heart Aroused – David Whyte
The Workplace Within – Larry Hirschhorn
The Answer to How is Yes – Peter Block
When Things Fall Apart – Pema Chodron
Thinking In Systems – Donella Meadows
Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle – Stephen Jay Gould
Solving Tough Problems – Adam Kahane
The Philosophic Consultant – Peter Koestenbaum
Reinventing Organizations – Fredric Laloux
Draft #4 – John McPhee
A Long Walk To Freedom – Nelson Mandela
To The Castle and Back -Vaclav Havel
Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch – Many Scotsmen and Scotswomen
A Life of Picasso, Volume 1 – John Richard
A Day At elBulli – Ferran Adria
Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen
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