Here are 100 books that Competing by Design fans have personally recommended if you like
Competing by Design.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. The organizations where we live, work, play, and worship affect every part of our lives. Organizations turn individual competencies into collective capabilities, isolated events into sustained patterns, and personal values into collective values. In short, organizations matter in our lives. By adapting their answer to “what is an organization,” leaders, employees, customers, and investors will be better able to improve their organization's experiences.
Jay Galbraith was the godfather of organization design. His work on how to design organizations has been the foundation of future work. He provides a system model with five parts (his star model) to diagnose and improve the organization. He also highlights the importance and role of information that flows from good organization design which was ahead of its time.
This Third Edition of the groundbreaking book Designing Organizations offers a guide to the process of creating and managing an organization (no matter how complex) that will be positioned to respond effectively and rapidly to customer demands and have the ability to achieve unique competitive advantage. This latest edition includes fresh illustrative examples and references, while the foundation of the book remains the author s popular and widely used Star Model. * Includes a comprehensive explanation of the basics of organization design * Outlines a strategic approach to design that is based on the Star Model, a holistic framework for…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. The organizations where we live, work, play, and worship affect every part of our lives. Organizations turn individual competencies into collective capabilities, isolated events into sustained patterns, and personal values into collective values. In short, organizations matter in our lives. By adapting their answer to “what is an organization,” leaders, employees, customers, and investors will be better able to improve their organization's experiences.
This is another classic in that it redefines the organization less as morphology and structure and more as a set of capabilities. Capabilities represent what an organization is known for and good at doing. Creating the right organization is less about roles and rules, but more about identifying and creating the right capabilities.
New competitive realities have ruptured industry boundaries, overthrown much of standard management practice, and rendered conventional models of strategy and growth obsolete. In their stead have come the powerful ideas and methodologies of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, whose much-revered thinking has already engendered a new language of strategy. In this book, they develop a coherent model for how today's executives can identify and accomplish no less than heroic goals in tomorrow's marketplace. Their masterful blueprint addresses how executives can ease the tension between competing today and clearing a path toward leadership in the future.
As a journalist covering the Future of Work and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I encountered pioneering social entrepreneurs and newly minted tech billionaires whose ideologies attracted millions and have since shaped our culture, economy, and society. I've curated some of the most impactful books that informed my understanding of their ambitions and how work is evolving, as well as the thought leaders who inspired them. Engaging with this content and integrating it over the last decade has transformed my worldview, leading me to a more fulfilling, peaceful, and creative life—but it’s been quite the journey!
Most businesses today are filled with untapped creative potential. The primary barrier? Bureaucracy.
Following in the footsteps of Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, this book takes a more academic approach, offering CEOs and MBAs rigorous case studies and practical strategies for influencing culture and reducing bureaucratic bloat. Authors Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini—also a McKinsey alum—argue that to be more innovative and adaptable, organizations need a new DNA, free from rigid structures and outdated management practices.
If crowd-sourced strategy, decentralized decision-making, and collective profit-sharing sound like a dream, this book shows how companies of all sizes are succeeding with these methods, adopted by global manufacturers like a leading French tire company and a Chinese appliance giant. It offers a practical guide for anyone looking to reshape work, regardless of their place in the organizational hierarchy.
In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring.
Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book.
In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. The organizations where we live, work, play, and worship affect every part of our lives. Organizations turn individual competencies into collective capabilities, isolated events into sustained patterns, and personal values into collective values. In short, organizations matter in our lives. By adapting their answer to “what is an organization,” leaders, employees, customers, and investors will be better able to improve their organization's experiences.
Ed Lawler has a lifetime of melding academic theory and organization practice. In this research based book, he and his colleagues not only recognize that agility matters, but they do research to validate processes that create organization agility. Agility is one of the emerging capabilities for a successful organization in today’s changing world. Anything El Lawler works is well thought out, researched, and usable.
A research-based approach to achieving long-term profitability in business What does it take to guarantee success and profitability over time? Authors Christopher G. Worley, a senior research scientist, Thomas D. Williams, an executive advisor, and Edward E. Lawler III, one of the country's leading management experts, set out to find the answer. In The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance the authors reveal the factors that drive long-term profitability based on the practices of successful companies that have consistently outperformed their peers. Of the 234 large companies across 18 industries that were studied, there were few companies that…
I've been driving innovation in various capacities with world’s leading companies and start-ups for the last 23 years in Silicon Valley. I've been granted six US patents, won two prestigious design awards including the Red Dot award, and published a book on transforming an idea into a business using Design Thinking. What I've learnt is that at the core of any successful business lies the value to the end user who uses the solutions. As I got exposed to Design Thinking earlier on in my career, I realized its immense power in delivering human-centered innovations. I regularly speak at several industry & entrepreneurial events and various business schools around the world.
This is a book that describes why design thinking can be a powerful tool for innovation and problem-solving.
Brown argues that traditional approaches to problem-solving often rely on linear and analytical thinking, which can be limiting when it comes to addressing complex and multifaceted challenges.
Brown presents a framework for design thinking that emphasizes empathy, experimentation, and collaboration.
I found numerous examples of individuals and organizations in the book that have successfully used design thinking to create innovative solutions to a wide range of problems, from improving healthcare to redesigning public spaces.
I found practical strategies of applying design thinking in life and work.
The subject of "design thinking" is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press-due in large part to the work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this book to show how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business.
The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and…
I’ve read countless books and articles on business, leadership, and sustainability—but the ones I return to are those that grapple with purpose. I’m drawn to anything that challenges the "business as usual" status quo and shows how business can be a force for good. Having worked across sectors and shaped my own thinking around the challenges facing business and society, I know how powerful purpose can be when done right. But more than that, I feel it—these books fuel my belief that meaningful change is possible. If you care about business’s potential to positively shape society and the planet, give them a go.
I’ve long admired Gary Hamel—not just because, like me, he’s a management consultant (albeit a far more famous one!), but because of the clarity and accessibility of his writing, which is much like Tom Peters–another breakthrough thinker I admire.
This book really hit home for me. I loved how Hamel puts values front and center, arguing that purpose isn’t just a nice-to-have, but a strategic imperative. I found myself deeply aligned with his call for innovation, adaptability, and unlocking human potential—principles I’ve built into the SOI methodology.
This book didn’t just affirm my thinking; it expanded it. It also reminded me why I do what I do–and actually why it’s important.
This is not a book about one thing. It's not a 250-page dissertation on leadership, teams or motivation. Instead, it's an agenda for building organizations that can flourish in a world of diminished hopes, relentless change and ferocious competition.
This is not a book about doing better. It's not a manual for people who want to tinker at the margins. Instead, it's an impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it-to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, organizational life, and the meaning of work.
Leaders today confront a world where the unprecedented is the norm. Wherever one…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am fascinated by work, especially women at work. I am an immigrant, a child of immigrants, a former scientist, and for most of life, have been conditioned to work because if I could not work, then why else was I here? Yet work is not strictly an emblem of immigrant grit or the model minority mindset. It can be made funny, surreal, existential, and it’s a rich subject to tackle. More often than not, work is treated as taboo. It’s ignored or deemed too prosaic to discuss. Who wants to see what goes on insidethe factory? I do. I’m obsessed with stories that showcase the factory.
Here is a dark comedy for the office worker. Office dysfunction is unique but also ubiquitous and lends itself well to, of course, Kafkaesque and Orwellian absurdity. One day, people just start getting fired, which leads to growing paranoia and more dysfunction. I like stories that don’t explain too much. Thanks to the pandemic, life, especially work life, has become increasingly amorphous and unreal. What is balance anymore? Where is the line? It’s refreshing to be immersed in a world even more bizarre than the one that workaholics now seem to be living in.
Ever wondered what your boss does all day?Or if there is a higher - perhaps an existential - significance to Microsoft Word malfunctions? This astonishing debut is a scathingly funny look at a group of office workers who have no idea what the unnamed corporation they work for actually does.When it looks like the company may be taken over, fear of redundancy unleashes a deliciously Kafkaesque plot full of the tedium and mistrust of corporate life and the backstabbing bitchiness of our survival-of-the-fittest instincts. We meet Pru, the ex-grad student-turned-spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety follows him into…
My passion for helping organisations, industries, and communities to make better decisions led me into the field of strategic foresight more than 20 years ago. I am particularly passionate about scenario planning as the most valuable tool for improving decision-making in a volatile and uncertain environment. Scenarios enable people to question their (often implicit) assumptions about the future and to reframe their perceptions of the future. It’s this enlightening quality about scenarios that makes them so special to me. My quest is to see scenario planning become a mainstream activity in organisations throughout the world.
This is an outstanding read! Art Kleiner has undergone an enormous amount of research on so-called heretics of the business world in the 20th century. Kleiner is a great writer, and whether you have heard of the heretic in question or not, it doesn’t matter.
Kleiner’s storytelling and the depth of his research will keep you engaged as a reader. The section on scenario planning is why I was attracted to this book in the first place; however, the entire book is first class.
In this second edition of his bestselling book, author Art Kleiner explores the nature of effective leadership in times of change and defines its importance to the corporation of the future. He describes a heretic as a visionary who creates change in large-scale companies, balancing the contrary truths they can't deny against their loyalty to their organizations. The Age of Heretics reveals how managers can get stuck in counterproductive ways of doing things and shows why it takes a heretical point of view to get past the deadlock and move forward.
My passion for helping organisations, industries, and communities to make better decisions led me into the field of strategic foresight more than 20 years ago. I am particularly passionate about scenario planning as the most valuable tool for improving decision-making in a volatile and uncertain environment. Scenarios enable people to question their (often implicit) assumptions about the future and to reframe their perceptions of the future. It’s this enlightening quality about scenarios that makes them so special to me. My quest is to see scenario planning become a mainstream activity in organisations throughout the world.
Peter Schwartz uses an easy, storytelling style that had me engaged instantly and held my interest throughout the book. He uses multiple personal case studies and stories to teach you how to think about the future. I found these stories both interesting and educational, as they were no doubt intended.
It’s a very easy and very engaging book to read. When people ask where they should start to improve how they think about the future, I point them to this book.
"Artful scenario spinning is a form of convergent thinking about divergent futures. It ensures that you are not always right about the future but-better-that you are almost never wrong about the future. The technology is powerful, simple, and enjoyable, and so is Schwartz's book." -Stewart Brand What increasingly affects all of us, whether professional planners or individuals preparing for a better future, is not the tangibles of life-bottom-line numbers, for instance-but the intangibles: our hopes and fears, our beliefs and dreams. Only stories-scenarios-and our ability to visualize different kinds of futures adequately capture these intangibles. In The Art of the…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
In order to earn my Ph.D. in Psychology before I turned thirty, I had to learn how to be efficient and productive. As a life coach and author of two dozen books, I’ve spent the past twenty years helping people overcome challenges, get things done, and get more out of life.
It makes me a little crazy when people insist on multi-tasking because they are being unnecessarily hard on themselves. Research has proven that it is much less efficient and effective than simply focusing on one thing at a time. When I can convince my clients to stop multi-tasking, they are shocked at how much easier it is to get things done. They are calmer and less stressed.
"...multitasking is, in fact, a lie that actually wastes time, energy, and money. Most of all, it robs us of life and our relationships with others." -Chuck Norris, world-renowned actor and martial artist
Through anecdotal and real-world examples, The Myth of Multitasking proves that multitasking hurts your focus and productivity. Instead, learn how to be more effective by doing one thing at a time.
Productivity and effective time management end with multitasking. The false idea that multitasking is productive has become even more prevalent and damaging to our productivity and well-being since the first edition…
