Reading list · 10 books
The Operator's Reading List.
The books I've actually internalized — not the ones I bought at the airport and skimmed on a flight. One line on each, what it did to my thinking.
Peter Drucker
The Effective Executive
The foundational read. Productivity as a discipline, management as a craft, outcomes over activity. Drucker has been the through-line since I came into business.
Jack Welch
Winning
Operating at scale, accountability without apology. The performance management discipline I built teams around for decades.
Patrick Lencioni
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Trust → conflict → commitment → accountability → results. Most underperforming teams don't have a strategy problem — they have a trust problem.
Daniel Coyle
The Culture Code
The small repeated signals that build belonging on a team. The science of why some rooms hum and most rooms don't.
William Ury & Roger Fisher
Getting to Yes
Out of the Harvard Negotiation Project. Separate the people from the problem; focus on interests, not positions. The discipline that turns hard conversations into mutual outcomes.
Daniel Goleman
Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness, self-control, empathy. The skills that separate "smart" from "effective" in any room where humans have to decide something together.
Jim Rohn
Twelve Pillars / The Art of Exceptional Living
Mindset and discipline as the foundations everything else compounds on. Build the person before the position.
Zig Ziglar
Secrets of Closing the Sale
Sales as service. "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want." I still have the cassette tapes.
James Trefil
The Three-Minute Einstein (referenced)
Not Einstein the physicist. Einstein the curious mind. His brain literally grew over his lifetime because he never stopped asking. Curiosity is the only renewable resource.
Nick Saban
How Good Do You Want To Be?
Saban's framing for the leader's job: see capability the person can't see, close the capability gap. I use "capability" deliberately — never "potential."
Eleven books, technically. If you've read three of these and want to talk about them, you'll find me a good conversation.