Five books to help think outside the box
Our faculty suggest books that that will entertain, inform and sharpen your leadership skills
In 30 Seconds
- In the age of AI, intuition and failure can be transformed into strategic advantages
- For a sense of who Milton Friedman really was, an excellent biography has the answers
- Psychological safety is a place where we can share mistakes and insights without fear of blame
Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmondson
Recommended by Stefano Turconi, Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
In this book, winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award, Amy Edmondson highlights how failure, when mismanaged, can lead to wasted opportunities and demoralised teams. The popular mantra “fail fast and often” can be misleading – even counterproductive – without a nuanced understanding of failure. Edmondson, renowned for her research into psychological safety, identifies three types of failure: basic failures, arising from neglect or oversight in routine tasks; complex failures, caused by interacting factors in unpredictable environments; and intelligent failures, which occur in novel situations where calculated risks are taken with learning as the goal.
The solution to the “problem” of failure, the author suggests, lies in reframing it through the lens of intelligent risk-taking. By cultivating psychological safety – where people feel empowered to share mistakes and insights without fear of blame – leaders can create an environment where failures become steppingstones to innovation, resilience and growth.
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"The popular mantra ‘fail fast and often’ can be misleading – even counterproductive without a nuanced understanding of failure"
Growth: A Reckoning by Daniel Susskind
Recommended by Joseba Martinez, Assistant Professor of Economics
“Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people.” This declaration in the UK Labour Party’s election-winning manifesto of 2024 is a hopeful sign that economic growth is reclaiming its place at the centre of policy debates.
Growth: A Reckoning arrives at precisely the right moment to address the puzzle of how to increase growth. The author documents that sustained growth in GDP per capita is a modern phenomenon that emerged only with the Industrial Revolution. His account traces how our understanding of the origins of growth has evolved; from early theories focused on physical capital to modern insights about the crucial role of technological advancement and innovation. While Susskind celebrates humanity’s success in raising living standards, he confronts the darker consequences of growth, particularly climate change and widening inequality. Yet, rather than embracing fashionable calls for “degrowth”, he charts a more nuanced course: finding ways to grow sustainably while managing the delicate balance between economic expansion and its social and environmental costs.
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns
Recommended by Linda Yueh, Adjunct Professor of Economics
JK Galbraith, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, captured the importance of Milton Friedman best. Galbraith said, at the end of the 1970s, “The age of John Maynard Keynes gave way to the age of Milton Friedman.”
The Keynesian Revolution was superseded by Friedman’s monetarists, whose views were encapsulated in the phrase, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Friedman attacked the Keynesian saving-investment theory as “unbelievably simple. Yet simply unbelievable.”
This biography excels not only in setting out Friedman’s intellectual contribution, but also in giving the reader a sense of the person and the times in which he lived. A libertarian and free market advocate, he believed that government had to set up basic rules and institutions to support the price system, but then get out of the way.
There is a wonderful anecdote about how he applied his views to his personal life. One Halloween, the Friedmans instituted a completely laissez-faire policy on candy consumption. Their theory was that their children would eventually become sated – but parental regulation followed when the theory proved false. So, another one of Friedman’s famous quotes is, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results.”
"I know what CEOs do, yet this work by the entrepreneur and star of BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den is a fantastically good read on how to lead others"
The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett
Recommended by Randall S Peterson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour; Academic Director, Leadership Institute
I know what CEOs do, yet this work by the entrepreneur, podcaster and star of BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den – subtitled The 33 Laws of Business and Life – is a fantastically good read on how to lead others. It is well-researched, evidence-based and illustrated with lots of stories from the author’s time as an entrepreneur.
As the subtitle suggests, the book is structured around 33 key “laws” or principles that cover a wide range of topics including creativity, communication, resilience and self-awareness. Each chapter explores a specific law and examines its applicability to personal and professional growth, with actionable (and extremely useful) strategies for implementation.
Bartlett also invites us to challenge conventional wisdom by adopting a mindset of continuous learning, using case studies, philosophical insights and anecdotes from his personal experience.
He writes in the blurb for the book: “At the very heart of all the success and failure I’ve been exposed to are a set of principles that can stand the test of time, apply to any industry, and be used by anyone who is in search of building something great or becoming someone great.” Hard to argue with that!
Intuition in Business by Eugene Sadler-Smith
Recommended by Stefano Turconi, Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Can intuition and failure be transformed into strategic advantages in the age of AI and systemic disruption? In Intuition in Business, Eugene Sadler-Smith explores how intuition – a uniquely human sensing capability – can complement analytical thinking in decision-making. He gives a compelling and detailed explanation of the science behind this; arguing that, while our analytical mind evolved to solve, our intuitive mind evolved to sense.
He identifies two cognitive systems: the analytical mind, which excels at solving problems through deliberate reasoning in structured, data-rich environments, and the intuitive mind, which rapidly detects patterns and possibilities in complex, uncertain situations. While intuition is invaluable, it is also fallible. To leverage it effectively, Sadler-Smith emphasises the importance of developing intuitive intelligence. This involves nurturing one’s innate capacity for intuition through experience, reflection and awareness of cognitive biases. By doing so, individuals can enhance their decision-making capabilities; especially in fast-moving, complex and uncertain business environments.
