Leaders: Must read books to address business challenges in 2021

Like 2020, 2021 too, has brought with a slew of changes that are set to have a trenchant impact on the business landscape. As a business leader, you are dealing with protracted uncertainty on all fronts. And in many ways, the decisions that you take today can make or break your business. So, how can you navigate the business landscape with a fresh perspective and implement novel solutions?

One of the more important focus areas for businesses today is creating top-performing cultures and inclusive leaders to better pivot the changing market landscape amidst turbulence.

Based on insights from Gartner, let’s take a look at some conventional and unconventional books that are captivating and will lend you a fresh perspective.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Fungus can also be rather fascinating. Did you know that these underappreciated organisms have the profound ability to shape people’s minds, heal bodies, and restore the environment? This book takes readers through an enthralling voyage of discovery, demonstrating how intertwined our lives are with fungi — from yeast to psychedelics to those that connect in a complex subterranean social network known as the “wood wide web” — and why fungi are critical to understanding our planet and the ways we think, feel, and behave.  Fungi, in many ways seem magical and alien, they can appear overnight and have captivating and ineffable shapes.  Merlin Sheldrake’s book gives you a fresh perspective on something that is considered to be an everyday natural phenomenon.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

Although thinking beyond our present COVID-19 world is tough, this book encourages you to do so. “The world that is emerging as a result of the epidemic, and — more crucially — our responses to it,” says the author. This important book, written as a series of ten lessons, explores the political, technical, and economic ramifications of a post-pandemic society. Exploring the future can be difficult when the present seems bleak.  This book several lessons from political developments in the US and sheds light on geopolitical dynamics and shifts. A must-read for global leaders.  There is also some reason to trust the predictions in the book as the author has a track record of making similarly accurate predictions in the past.

The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders: Unleashing the Power of All of Us by Andrés T. Tapia and Alina Polonskaia

This newly released handbook to inclusive leadership comes at a time when businesses are looking to establish more inclusive, diverse, and equitable cultures. According to the authors, firms must have inclusive leadership at all levels in order to develop such cultures. As diversity initiatives fall short, the book explores some of the best strategies to build sustainably diverse cultures for organizations today.

The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights by Douglas Conant

This book is half manifesto, half practical handbook, and it is based on six ideas that Conant utilised to improve his professional life after being dismissed without cause in 1984: Reach for the stars, dig deep, lay the foundation, plan, construct, and strengthen. Since then, he has served as the CEO of Campbell Soup Company and the president of Nabisco Foods. Shedding light on key aspects of being a leader such as digging deep, building the grounding, creating and reinforcing principles to reach new business heights.  This book is actionable and has many exercises that enable leaders to pivot through challenging situations, bringing out a profound change in their business apart from enhancing their capabilities as leaders.