A reading list for apex executives in 2025

At Teal Unicorn , Dr. Cherry Vu and I have just finished writing a new book, The Open Executive, specifically for the apex executives: the people at the top of the hierarchal pyramid. (If you are an apex exec and you are reading this in early January 2025, hurry over there to tealunicorn.com/toe for a free copy and some pro bono support.)

Here is the reading list from that book. If you are in a similar role, this might give you some reading suggestions for 2025.

On leadership, in no particular order:

• The Open Organization, Jim Whitehurst. Leading with meritocracy. (A narrower definition of “open” than we are using here).

• The Leader’s Dilemma, Hope, Bunce, and Roosli. An excellent introduction to better ways of leading.
• Turn the Ship Around, L. David Marquet. Invitational management and distributed decision making. In a submarine.
• Be REMARKABLE, Karen Ferris. Exactly the same messages as our book, only written by our friend Karen, who beat us to it. A great second opinion.
• The New Economics, W. Edwards Deming. To show these ideas are not new (the book is from 1993, and is the culmination of Deming’s career).
• Maverick, Ricardo Semler, the founder of Semco, a model of worker autonomy.
• Higher Ground, Alison Taylor. An insightful new work on corporate ethics.
• Directing the Agile Organisation, Evan Leybourn. For board directors.

For your own personal development, it is hard to recommend books because the journey is so…well… personal.? We suggest

• The Authentic Shift, Carl Lindeborg. A new book, almost perfectly aligned with what we say in our book.
• Emotional Agility, Dr Susan David.? Worked for me.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey. A classic.
• The Earned Life, Marshall Goldsmith.? Buddhist ideas of accepting impermanence and avoiding endless happiness deferral.

More generally, we like these introductory books to Open ways of managing and working. Pick one or two of these:

• Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan. Our recommended starter book.

• A Radical Enterprise, Matt Parker. Or maybe this is our recommended starter book.
• Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux. The seminal work that kicked a lot of “open” thinking off. Don’t miss the Foreword by Ken Wilber.
• Corporate Rebels, Pim de Moree and Joost Minnaar. An introduction framed around their many case studies of WDGLL.
• Management 3.0, Jurgen Appelo. A colourful overview of these better ways of managing.?
• Open Management , Rob England and Dr Cherry Vu

Then read some of these:

• Strategic Doing, Ed Morrison. Solid practical methods. Our top pick for the book you read after an introductory one.
• Humanocracy, Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini. Bureaucracy kills organisations. Humanocracy frees them.
• How Organizations Should Work, Dean Meyer. For the academic thinker.
• Team of Teams, Stanley McChrystal. Distributed decision making to try to defeat the Taliban.?
• Sooner Safer Happier, Jonathan Smart. A comprehensive overview of open management and work.

• The agile Manager (small a), Rob England and Dr Cherry Vu

If you want to learn more about complexity:

• How Complex Systems Fail, Dr Richard Cook. A brief paper available as downloadable PDF – google it.
• The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge. This book is supposed to be about the culture of learning, but it is actually a masterclass in complex systems thinking, highly recommended.
• Beyond Command and Control, John Seddon. Read at least the first half.?
• Cynefin, Dave Snowden. A collection of essays for the serious reader.
• S&T Happens, Rob England and Dr Cherry Vu.

We know that’s a ridiculous number of books. We left as many out. This is a well-covered field now.?

And if you want to understand why you should use small successful consulting companies like Teal Unicorn instead of the “Big C” management consulting corporations, read

• The Big Con, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington?
• When McKinsey Comes to Town, Michael Forsythe

If that is useful to you, please consider joining our mailing list for upcoming announcements about the book, our Better 2025 project, and other news from Teal Unicorn tealunicorn.com/mailing-list .

And follow us on Linkedin Rob England Dr. Cherry Vu Teal Unicorn