Change Makers and Decision Takers
This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.
Exploring how to lead positive change, collaborative change and innovation, stories of purpose-driven change, creative tensions, thinking for change, empowering others to make better choices.
Here is more information about the Series 8 selection of books and discussions.
Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level (Balance, September 2022) by Alex Budak. This is a radically inclusive playbook for leading positive change. It’s a fresh, inspiring, and research-backed guide to developing the mindsets and leadership skills needed to navigate, shape, and lead change and to thrive amidst uncertainty. A faculty member at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Budak created and teaches the wildly popular course “Becoming a Changemaker,” which has quickly grown into one of the most highly-rated courses anywhere on campus. It’s regularly heralded by students as “transformative” and “life changing”
Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs (John Murray, August 2014) by Joshua Wolf Shenk. He argues that creative pairs are the exemplars for innovation. Drawing on years of research on great partnerships in history - from Lennon and McCartney to Marie and Pierre Curie, plus hundreds more in fields including literature, popular culture, art and business - Shenk identifies the common journey pairs take from the spark of initial connection, through the passage to a cognitive 'joint identity' to competition and the struggle for power.
Turning Points: 25 Remarkable Australians and the Moments that Changed Their Lives (Monash University Publishing, December 2022) by Mary Ryllis Clark. When she came across her copy of Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning, she was struck by the idea that ‘the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose’. This propelled her on a journey to seek out and interview those individuals whose stories had inspired her.
Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems (Harvard Business Review Press, August 2022) by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis. They examine using "both/and" thinking to make more creative, flexible, and impactful decisions in a world of competing demands. For many of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one option over the other. We deal with the uncertainty by asserting certainty.
What We Owe The Future: A Million-Year View (Oneworld Publications, September 2022) by William MacAskill an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University. He explores the profound moral decisions about how humanity’s course plays out. We can create positive change on behalf of future generations
Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices (Yale University Press, April 2022) by Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman. They state: “Effective leaders are decision architects, enabling those around them to make wise, ethical choices consistent with their own interests and the organization’s highest values. As a result, a leader’s impact grows because it ripples out instead of relying on one individual to play the part of heroic figure.”
… and here are a few posts from our ‘most read’ articles
EXECUTIVES NEED TO STAY RELEVANT
Discover the support we offer executives, new and aspiring directors. About Dianne Jacobs | Discover how to get On Boards or Next Level | Join the Mailing List