Great Business Books You Must Read, 2024

This is a year when organizations are on the line and smart leadership is crucial. Market shifts are happening faster than ever. Entrepreneurs are struggling to gain traction in a crowded arena. That great new product? Glitches in your operations could tank the best idea you ever had. Workplaces are wrestling with return-to-work policies, engagement and retention gaps, and performance metrics that miss the mark. Leaders who aren’t paying attention to the importance of diversity may lose out in team loyalty and employee motivation.

These books represent a font of practical knowledge, with authors ranging from Harvard professors to Fortune 100 consultants to veteran executives to strategic advisors. It’s an encyclopedic collection of stories and strategies to help you undo the silos, update, streamline or expand, think clearly, and most of all, make the right decisions for your organization, your people and your dream.

Time to get reading: in knowledge is power, especially in 2024.

1. “Designed-Centered Entrepreneurship,” second edition, by Min Basadur, Michel Goldsby and Rob Mathews. Three innovation experts unlock seven keys to successful innovation — fact-finding, immersive strategies that result in better problem definition and better solutions. This is an invaluable guidebook for entrepreneurs looking for that all-important niche. The second edition adds in compelling new global examples, a discussion of social entrepreneurship, and additional resources such as a virtual creative problem-solving profile, slides, and an instructor manual.

   

2. “The Character Compass: Transforming Leadership for the 21st Century,” by Dr. Mary Crossan,  Bill Furlong, and Gerard Seijts. What do you get when you bring a global strategic leadership professor, a seasoned international executive, and an expert on organizational behavior together? This wisdom-packed read on what character really means in terms of leadership. As the authors write, leading isn’t just a position — it’s a disposition that can transform an organization’s culture. Filled with examples from a range of arenas, this book offers a practical breakdown of the qualities that make for effective leadership — as an action, not a stance — including competencies, commitment, character, and nearly a dozen other need-to-know attributes.

   

3. “The Includers: The 7 Traits of Culturally Savvy, Anti-Racist Leaders,” by Colette Phillips. Healthy working environments and powerful organizational cultures don’t happen by themselves, particularly in an era when DEI is getting heavy pushback. But we also know that diversity as a proven driver of innovation and engagement: if you want your workforce to go the extra mile, there’s nothing like feeling that sense of cohesion, belonging, and inclusion. Most leader want to leverage that power, and those that have already see results across countless industries. This inspiring book by a member of Boston Business Journal’s influential Power 50 List lays out proven tactics and actions that executives, managers and their teams can take to become Includers and DEI allies. It’s simpler than you think — and her stories of executives coming to terms with their own mindsets is revelatory.
4.  “The 9th Stratum: Your Guide to High Performance” by Aaron Salko. This veteran sales management professional is also passionate about human performance — and achieving it at the highest levels. As he writes, at the 9th stratum, leaders can have an enormous impact on their organization — by delegating. When you’ve ascended the ladder to the point when you have to triage your tasks, delegation is a must. But vital as it is to effective leadership, it’s not that simple. If you delegate without empowering your team, you’re losing a huge opportunity to develop their skills, ability and loyalty. If you just offload mind-numbing tasks, no one will benefit. If you micromanage based on what you would do, that’s an enormous mistake that can cost dearly in engagement. What about delegating tasks at a team without the necessary training? Get used to losing talent. This is a commonsense roadmap for anyone in charge.
5. “Open Culture Handbook: Five Questions to Drive Engagement and Innovation,” by Drew Jones, PhD. Workplace culture isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a living, breathing organism that can drive excellence and creativity. The author, an anthropologist, former business school professor and practicing global management consultant, is an expert on the dynamics of culture in the workplace. His latest book is a crisply informative roadmap to successful culture change based on five essential questions that cover employees’ abilities, innovation opportunities, decision making, radical transparency, and accountability. In an era when companies need to grow to sustain themselves, it’s absolutely worth the read.
6. “Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders,” by Lori Mazan. A top leadership coach with 25 years working with executives from Fortune 100 CEOs to start-up leaders shares what makes for successful leaders: nimbleness, openness, and responsiveness. As she writes — outdated leadership developments are going to be even more counterproductive than ever, but leadership coaching has never been more important. This book offers the practices to get it right.
7. “Revolutionizing Business Operations: How to Build Dynamic Processes for Enduring Competitive Advantage,” by Tony Saldanha and Filippo Passerini. This team of savvy executives has a lot to say about transforming business process and why it’s so critical to market survival. Don’t just focus on product innovation, they argue: business operations drive success for the long-term. Get rid of the silos, push for accountability across the board, run each business process as a separate business, and leaders will stave off the obsolescence and friction that mar success.
8. “Warriors, Rebels, and Saints: The Art of Leadership from Machiavelli to Malcolm X,” by Moshik Temkin. Based on his wildly popular course at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, this leadership scholar examines leaders throughout history — the good and the bad. There’s much to learn from the past that can better position us for the future, including how to make the right decisions, exercise good governance, avoid awful outcomes, and know when a leader doesn’t actually deserve the throne (or office) they assumed. Highly insightful, provocative, and timely.

You invest mightily in your own innovations and organizations. Whatever knowledge can give you the upper hand, I heartily recommend you grab it. Here’s to a year of entrepreneurial victories, innovative wonders, and leadership triumphs. No better way to learn that from those who experienced hard lessons firsthand and used it to solidify their vision. Now it’s your turn.

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