Books I’ve read and would recommend.
Mindset
Gladwell makes a strong case that snap judgements can be as good as slow, deliberate thinking, and that they can also go badly wrong when bias gets in the way. I liked how practical it felt: not “trust your gut blindly”, but learn when thin-slicing helps and when you need to slow down. Useful if you make a lot of decisions under pressure and want a clearer model for what’s going on.
Delivery · Leadership
The research behind high-performing technology organisations, without the usual hand-waving. It gives you measures that actually matter (delivery speed, stability, recovery) and the capabilities that drive them. I recommend it because it turns “DevOps culture” into something you can argue for with evidence, not vibes.
Delivery
A sharp look at how invisible work steals time: too much WIP, unclear priorities, constant interruptions, and heroics that look productive but aren’t. DeGrandis gives simple ways to surface the real load so teams can improve flow instead of burning out. Good reading if your calendar is full and delivery still feels stuck.
Leadership
Leadership lessons drawn from the All Blacks: humility, culture, standards, and the small habits that compound into something elite. It’s not a sports book dressed up as management; it’s a clear argument that culture is the work, not a side project. I come back to it when thinking about what high-performing teams actually do day to day.
Mindset
Peters’ model for how the mind works (the emotional “chimp”, the rational self, and the computer of habits) is simple enough to use under stress. It helped me notice when reaction is driving the show, and what to do about it without pretending feelings aren’t real. Practical mind management, not fluffy self-help.
Product
A clear warning about organisations that ship features and call it progress. Perri explains how product management should connect strategy, discovery, and outcomes so teams solve problems instead of filling roadmaps. Essential if you’ve ever watched a team stay busy while the customer value stays flat.
Leadership · Mindset
Real stories about unhealthy workplaces and the choices people face: cope, push back, or leave. It’s less of a toolkit for fixing a whole organisation and more of a grounded look at what toxicity does to people, and how to protect yourself. Worth reading if you’ve ever wondered whether “it’s just me” or the environment really is broken.
Mindset
Not really about tennis. Gallwey’s idea is that self-doubt and overthinking get in the way of performance, and that relaxed concentration beats forced control. I recommend it for anyone who coaches, presents, builds, or leads. The same inner interference shows up far beyond the court.
Leadership
A practical take on why “good job” doesn’t land the same for everyone. Chapman and White translate appreciation into concrete languages (words, time, acts, gifts, and physical presence) so managers and teammates can encourage people in ways that actually feel genuine. Simple idea, big impact on morale if you apply it.
Systems
The classic on learning organisations and systems thinking. Senge shows how personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking fit together, and why local fixes often make the wider system worse. Dense in places, but it permanently changes how you look at organisational problems.
Systems
The “what do we do on Monday?” companion to The Fifth Discipline. Exercises, stories, and practical prompts for building shared vision, running dialogue, and applying systems thinking with real teams. I recommend reading it alongside the main book if you want ideas you can actually take into meetings.
Product
Pine and Gilmore argue that goods and services aren’t enough. Memorable experiences are where value moves next. It’s a useful lens for service design and product work: stage the journey deliberately, don’t just ship features and hope people care. Makes you rethink what customers are actually paying for.
Systems · Mindset
McGarvey writes about the gap between people who make decisions and people who live with the consequences: poverty, policy, policing, and proximity. It’s uncomfortable in the right way. I recommend it because it challenges tidy assumptions about fairness and forces you to notice how distance shapes judgement.
Mindset · Leadership
Erikson’s four-colour model (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue) is a blunt way to notice why some conversations feel effortless and others feel impossible. It is not deep personality science, but it is practical: adapt how you talk, decide, and push back instead of assuming everyone processes the world like you. Useful if you lead, collaborate, or keep bouncing off the same people.
Product · Systems
Tett argues that anthropology’s habit of noticing unspoken rituals, tribes, and blind spots is a better lens for business than spreadsheets alone. The stories (Wall Street, warehouses, classrooms, consumers) make culture feel like something you can observe, not a soft afterthought. I recommend it when product or org decisions keep missing what people actually do.
Mindset · Systems
Fromm’s classic on why freedom can feel unbearable: isolation and insecurity push people towards conformity, submission, or authoritarianism. It is old, dense in places, and still sharp about the psychology behind “just tell me what to do.” Worth reading if you care how culture, democracy, and personal agency hang together under pressure.
Delivery · Leadership
Doerr’s case for OKRs is really a case for focus: a few clear objectives, measurable key results, and transparency so teams pull in the same direction. The Google and other company stories make the method concrete without pretending it is magic. Good reading if goals keep proliferating and nobody can say what “done” means.
Systems
Meadows makes stocks, flows, feedback loops, and leverage points feel usable instead of academic. It trains you to look past local fixes that make the wider system worse, and to stay humble about what you can control. I recommend it as the clearest practical companion to systems thinking at work, especially alongside Senge.
Delivery · Systems
Skelton and Pais give a clear model for how teams should be shaped and how they should talk to each other: stream-aligned, platform, enabling, and complicated-subsystem teams, plus a few interaction modes that keep cognitive load sane. It treats org design as something that should evolve with the architecture, not a one-off restructure. I recommend it when delivery feels stuck in handoffs and nobody can explain why the team boundaries look the way they do.
Leadership
Lencioni’s leadership fable makes the five dysfunctions feel concrete: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. The story format is easy to follow, and the pyramid model sticks. Useful if your team is polite but stuck, or if healthy disagreement never quite happens.
Leadership · Systems
Larson treats engineering management as a systems problem: team sizing, technical debt, succession, and the trade-offs that show up as you scale. It is practical without pretending every company is the same, drawing on Digg, Uber, and Stripe without turning into war stories. I recommend it when you want structured principles for people leadership, not just another set of vague culture tips.